---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash Groupe Bull Announces Support For HP And Sun At Industry Standard Group SunFLASH Vol 29 #3 May 1991 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Collaborative Effort Seen as Furthering Shared Vision of Object Management Technology FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- May 15, 1991 -- Groupe Bull announced its support for the Hewlett-Packard/Sun Microsystems submission to the Object Management Group (OMG), an international organization of system vendors and users. Groupe Bull will strengthen HP/Sun's proposal by supporting their response to the OMG's request for Object Request Broker (ORB) technology. ORB defines an advanced method for using and sharing information on networked computers from different vendors. Groupe Bull was one of the original submittors to the OMG with technology referred to as the Comandos Object Manager. Groupe Bull, HP and Sun, in an effort to further their shared vision of object management, have agreed to integrate Comandos Object Manager with the Distributed Object Management Facility proposed to the OMG by HP and Sun. The complementary technologies from Comandos Object Manager and the Distributed OMG will provide a solution for the ORB which can be quickly adapted by the industry. "Groupe Bull's Comandos Object Manager technology contains many significant advances in the area of distributed object management," said Robert J. Frankenberg, HP vice president and general manager of the Personal Systems Group. "We welcome their support and believe that the integration of Comandos Object Manager into the DOMF emphasizes one of the major strengths of our submission -- the flexibility to easily and quickly work with existing object management facilities." The Bull technology contribution includes a set of object managers from Comandos which provide services such as object activation, deactivation and installation. The Comandos Object Manager will be integrated into the Distributed OMF core communications services. The open architecture of the Distributed OMF permits the addition of object services from other systems. As a result of the joint agreement, the Commandos Object Manager will utilize the Distributed OMF location services and other object services as well. By working within the framework of the Distributed OMF, the Comandos Object Manager will be able to interact and exchange information with Distributed OMF objects. By taking these steps with Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, we believe that we are furthering the aims of OMG to identify and object brokering solution which can be quickly adopted by its members and the industry as a whole," said Lucio Pinto, Groupe Bull Director of European Engineering. "Comandos provides a powerful, object-oriented, distributed development environment, including extensions of C++ and other (object-oriented) languages, methods and tools which dramatically enhance the productivity of distributed applications. Not only will HP/Sun benefit from this technology, other managers that share the DOMF framework will also have the capability to interact with objects handles by Comandos. Comandos is currently supported by Commission of European Communities within the ESPRIT program, so we feel that this will work with HP/Sun should add momentum to the OMG process while also complementing our respective products. Edward J. Zander, president of SunSoft, Inc. a new system software subsidiary of Sun Microsystems added, "Groupe Bull's contribution brings a strong international dimension to the HP/Sun submission." Groupe Bull, comprised of Bull SA (France) and Bull SA (Europe), U.S.-based Bull HN Information Systems, and Zenith Data Systems, provides information systems to customers around the world. Its products range from portable to mainframe computers, software using both open and its own GCOS systems, and comprehensive service and support. With a presence in more than 100 countries and combined revenues of about $6.4 billion, Bull is among the top ten computer companies. Hewlett-Packard Company is an international manufacturer of measurement and computation products and systems recognized for excellence in quality and support. The company's products and services are used in industry, business, engineering, science, medicine and education in approximately 100 countries. HP has 91,000 employees and had revenues of $13.2 billion in its 1990 fiscal year. Sun Microsystems, Inc., headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is a leading worldwide supplier of network-based distributed computing systems, including professional workstations, servers and UNIX operating systems productivity software. [copyright boilerplate: ONC is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. All other products mentioned herein are identified by the trademarks as designed by the companies who market those products. Inquiries concerning such trademarks should be made to those companies.] For Further Information Contact: Steve Martino ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For information send mail to info-sunflash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Subscription requests should be sent to sunflash-request@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Archives are on solar.nova.edu and paris.cs.miami.edu. 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