Industry Watch

• 06/01/2001

IBM will be developing and installing more than 1,100 self-service kiosks for United Airlines during the next two years. As part of the largest-ever deployment of kiosks by an airline, United plans to install an initial 800 "EasyCheck-in" self-service units throughout 25 U.S. airports before the end of the year, with the remainder to be installed in 2002.

The new EasyCheck-in units will allow United’s U.S. domestic e-ticket customers to perform a wide variety of transactions without waiting in line at ticket counters or gates. Specifically, United Airlines, United Shuttle and United Express customers will be able to:

• Have their boarding passes issued, enabling them to proceed directly to the aircraft.

• Print an e-ticket receipt.

• View a graphical seat map and change seat assignments.

• Request an upgrade.

• Keep Mileage Plus accounts current.

• Check bags at designated kiosks.

The new EasyCheck-in units are part of a comprehensive package of timesaving initiatives United Airlines is deploying throughout North America.

The HP e3000 server family has grown, with the addition of the A- and N-class servers. The HP e3000 A-class server is an entry-level Web-enabled data management solution. It is available with 110 MHz or 140 MHz, up to two-way multi-processing and supports up to 8 GB of memory. The HP e3000 N-class server is a midrange and high-end system. It offers 220, 330, 440 and 550 MHz processors, up to four-way multi-processing and supports up to 16 GB of memory. Both servers are bundled with MPE/iX Release 7.0, which provides connectivity and interoperability with UNIX, NT and other major Internet and intranet platforms.

Both the HP e3000 A- and N-class servers feature built-in Image/SQL database management software to ensure data security without a third-party database. The Image/SQL database provides industry-standard SQL interfaces, as well as an online transaction management system. The servers also use a bus structure designed to support several Precision Architecture RISC (PA-RISC) processors. The HP e3000 A- and N-class servers are available immediately.

Dell recently expanded its Premier Enterprise Services, with Premier Enterprise Support, which offers four new tiers of support – Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. Premier Enterprise Support includes engineer-to-engineer support, technical account management and single-point-of-accountability support for issue resolution of leading enterprise software applications.

Premier Enterprise Services is comprised of:

• Premier Enterprise Consulting is provided by Dell Technology Consulting (DTC). Service offerings include design and on-site implementation of complex storage systems, enterprise hardware training and tuning and proof-of concept services in Dell’s Technology Solution Centers.

• Premier Enterprise Deployment tailors systems to specific customer requirements by integrating custom-configured hardware and software into Dell’s manufacturing process, coordinating delivery and managing all aspects of an on-site installation.

• Premier Enterprise Support helps maximize system uptime through problem prevention, rapid issue resolution and easy-to-select support offerings.

Dell plans to extend its enterprise services offerings as its server and storage customer base grows. For more information, visit www.dell.com/enterpriseservices.

Oracle Launches iDevelop2001 Online

Oracle’s iDevelop2001 Online is a new 24 x 7 online service that offers developers a Web-based solution for education and training. The iDevelop2001 Online service is available to developers free-of-charge through Oracle Technology Network (OTN), a repository of software, resources, training and expertise needed to develop Internet applications. OTN membership reached 1.5 million developers in early April, and Oracle expects it to continue growing at more than 68,000 new members per month.

iDevelop2001 Online offers technical courses about the latest Java and XML technologies. More specifically, these structured training modules cover development and deployment of application services, portals, Internet business process integration, high-performance Web sites and wireless applications using Java, XML and SQL on Oracle9i. Developers will have the opportunity to submit questions to Oracle’s development managers and experts during online live "eChats" offered for each course. iDevelop2001 Online classes offer in-depth technical information on Oracle9i products.

HP, Intel, NEC and Dell have announced availability of version 1.5 of the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specifications. IPMI defines common interfaces to "intelligent" hardware used to monitor a server’s physical health characteristics, such as temperature, voltage, fans, power supplies and chassis. These capabilities provide information that enables system management, recovery and asset tracking, which help drive down the total cost of ownership.

The new interfaces in IPMI 1.5 facilitate the management of rack-mounted Internet servers and systems in remote environments over serial, modem and LAN connections. IPMI 1.5 also includes new capabilities to automatically alert IT managers of system errors and enable immediate system recovery. These new capabilities, combined with the remote management functionality, allow IT managers to manage their servers and systems, regardless of system health, power state or supported communication media.

IPMI 1.5 is backward-compatible with version 1.0 and includes extensions to support existing and emerging standards, such as the Desktop Management Task Force Alert Standard Forum, CompactPCI, SMBus 2.0 and proposed PCI Management Bus. IPMI 1.5 systems will be deployed in the second half of 2001.

Since IPMI 1.0 was introduced in 1998, more than 70 companies representing a broad cross-section of the industry have adopted IPMI, including system and motherboard OEMs, silicon vendors and embedded computer manufacturers. Several companies are also creating baseboard and peripheral management controllers for IPMI, including Agilent Technologies, QLogic, National Semiconductor, Vitesse Semiconductor and Winbond Electronics. In addition, the vendors are including IPMI firmware and software development kits (SDKs) in their offerings, and the IBM-AIX and HP-UX operating systems are providing IPMI messaging support.

Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies (FM&T), a business unit of Honeywell International has selected Convera to supply intelligent search technology for its digital asset management system.

Honeywell FM&T has licensed Convera RetrievalWare and Convera Visual RetrievalWare as the core technologies for a dynamic U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) archive of photographs, X-ray images, weapons materials standards and other information. As the management and operating contractor for the DOE’s Kansas City Plant, Honeywell manufactures sophisticated electronic, manufacturing and engineered material components for national defense systems.

Convera RetrievalWare currently powers the search functionality for a database of over 10,000 weapons materials standards documents. RetrievalWare also is used to search across an archive of over 400,000 pages of accounting information, records of retirement and other information.

Building on its use of RetrievalWare, Honeywell also has licensed Convera Visual RetrievalWare to allow the addition of images to the digital asset management system. A five-year legacy inventory of over 13,000 high-resolution photographs of the people, weapons and facilities of Honeywell has been added to the database. Honeywell and Department of Energy employees are able to retrieve these images, saved as jpeg files, using either keywords or searches based on image content.

Honeywell also plans to use Visual RetrievalWare to index and search across an archive of over one million product-related X-ray images. Each product manufactured by Honeywell has been X-rayed, resulting in a five tractor-trailer load archive of images.

For more information, visit www.convera.com.

Caldera Systems and The Santa Cruz Operation Inc. (SCO) have announced the forthcoming release of Open UNIX 8. By incorporating the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) technology into the next release of the UnixWare 7 kernel, Open UNIX 8 will enable Linux applications to be deployed on top of the UNIX kernel. Caldera will become the owner of the UNIX kernel when the acquisition of the SCO Server Software Division is completed, and the combined companies will be known as Caldera International.

Open UNIX 8 will maintain compatibility and continuity with the UnixWare 7 operating system, while providing a complete Linux environment.

SEAGULL has partnered with Hands on Atlanta as part of a new program to decrease the "digital divide" in Atlanta. The Partners in Technology program is designed to spark an industrywide service commitment to the principles of community service. SEAGULL’s support of the program will be ongoing through a combination of sponsorships and volunteer opportunities for SEAGULL employees.

Partners in Technology volunteers will work with metro-Atlanta schools, nonprofit organizations and City of Atlanta Community Technology Centers to educate adults, senior citizens and children about the benefits of the Internet and computers.

Jacada Ltd. and SRA International Inc., an information technology consulting and systems integration firm that provides services and solutions to the federal government, announced that SRA would leverage Jacada legacy extension tools in its newly created Systems Transformation Center of Excellence. Under the agreement, the two companies will jointly deliver cost-effective e-business solutions, consulting and training to SRA’s federal government clients that have made large investments in mainframe systems and applications.

The new Systems Transformation Center of Excellence addresses a critical government need to integrate and modernize disparate systems that must maintain the flexibility and robustness to rapidly adapt to changing business and mission requirements.

Jacada provides a complete software infrastructure to rapidly transform legacy applications and business-critical systems into e-business and wireless solutions, as well as to empower government developers to build Internet applications. Using a thin-client architecture, Jacada technology is rapidly deployed, extending mission-critical federal government applications to users via secure intranets. Additionally, a new intuitive, graphical interface allows for reengineered screen navigation that immediately improves application workflow efficiency.

NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) has selected Orbital Software’s Organik knowledge sharing and collaboration software to pilot a new knowledge management system. The initial pilot program utilizes Organik’s intuitive question-and-answer form of knowledge retrieval to create an interactive knowledge community for NASA’s Information Systems Directorate (ISD) in order to streamline procedures and increase staff productivity and efficiency.

ISD provides support to the entire JSC and performs a variety of critical functions ranging from information technology and phone system support to library, historical archives and television services. The implementation of Organik will document much of the inherent knowledge associated with these tasks for the first time. In addition, Organik will foster and organize this shared knowledge as a repository for future inquiries and provide a collaborative environment where the nearly 100-person ISD staff will interact with each other to provide accurate, timely answers to questions.

Sun Microsystems and PeopleSoft have joined to deliver a scalable, Internet-ready customer relationship management (CRM) solution to better serve the communications and brokerage industries.

The global alliance will offer PeopleSoft’s integrated enterprise CRM solution on Sun’s Solaris 8 Operating Environment and Java technology-based platforms. Sun and PeopleSoft will engage in joint sales, services and go-to-market activities. The companies will also collaborate on engineering efforts and work with customers in Sun’s iForce Ready Center locations to create proof of concepts and develop architecture blueprints in an enterprise lab environment. The companies claim the solution will be the first to fully integrate front and back office departments and internal processes with customers, suppliers and employees. For more information, visit www.peoplesoft.com, or http://sun.com.