IMI Plc’s Uniplex Ltd has finally bitten the bullet and embarked on a major overhaul of its long-established Uniplex integrated office automation software suite, one of the dominating forces in the Unix software market. Called Nouveau, the effort aims to move the software into the worlds of graphics and objects, from a terminal-host architecture to client-server, and also to enable users to plug in their own preferred product modules such as their favourite word processor or spreadsheet – if they like. Dumb terminal users will also continue to be catered for. Uniplex has obviously been taking a peek at newer-generation products such as Clarity Rapport, and at the facilities available in desktop publishing systems such as FrameMaker, and is putting in place an architecture to deal with compound documents – text, paint and draw (and later speech and video) that can be associated with, and operated on from a single document. There are five key areas to be addressed by Nouveau: document processing (in a multimedia context); business communications (including global mail and directory services); document management (particularly dealing with compound documents); information access (beyond databases to financial information, process control and such); and active integration (drawing Uniplex and third-party applications into a groupware context). At the core is the Universal Server, providing the mail backbone, with X400 mail, X500-based routing and management, transfer agents and gateways, and support for compound documents. It will also interface to Novell Inc’s NetWare, telex, facsimile, and to proprietary office systems such as Profs and All-In-1. This, along with a Microsoft Corp Windows client, X Window client and character-based client will make up the first release, expected this year, possibly June. The following year will see the release of an Active Integration Manager, enabling resellers and end-users to embed office rules and procedures into the system to trigger off events automatically. And in 1994 the full document and object management support should be available. Of course Uniplex is moving towards uncharted territory as it attempts to link applications – its own and third party – to service compound documents, especially when they could be required to work across global networks with thousands of users, as required by many of the company’s giant government and defence contracts. For MS-Windows applications it is using Microsoft’s Dynamic Data Exchange, and will use the Object Linking and Embedding facility. For Unix, it has implemented its own versions of DDE and OLE, but must wait for the Object Management Group to sort out a standards-based approach before it can go too far. To that end, it is working with object specialists and Object Group member Hyperdesk Corp. Meantime it will encourage its third-party application vendors to add support for its interfaces. Now that its parent company Redwood International Plc has been sold off to IMI Plc, a far larger UK company, Uniplex Inc chief Jeff Waxman has resigned citing personal reasons: the US operation will be managed by a team of US-based senior executives headed by Patrick Register who is otherwise in charge of international sales at Uniplex Ltd, the Uniplex arm that operates outside the Americas.
