The market for Unix-based SNA communications software has long been dominated by a handful of specialist companies that run neck-and-neck in announcing new levels of SNA support, and now two of the leaders have extended their range with products for exchanging documents with IBM office systems. New York-based Systems Strategies Inc, which numbers AT&T, IBM, […]
The market for Unix-based SNA communications software has long been dominated by a handful of specialist companies that run neck-and-neck in announcing new levels of SNA support, and now two of the leaders have extended their range with products for exchanging documents with IBM office systems. New York-based Systems Strategies Inc, which numbers AT&T, IBM, and DEC among its OEM customers, last week added cSNADS, a portable version of IBM’s SNA Distribution Services, which allows asynchronous document exchange between non-IBM systems, mainframes running IBM’s DisOSS/370 office software and System/36 and /38 machines running the Personal Services software. cSNADS, which uses System Strategies’s existing SNA LU6.2 product, provides a store-and-forward facility to allow local and remote mail delivery to avoid the need for both sender and receiver to be active simultaneously, and allows different priorities to be set for the distribution of documents. System Strategies, a subsidiary of AGS Computers which also has a London office serving the European market, gives per-copy pricing of $100-400 depending on quantity. Meanwhile ICL’s San Jose, California partner on SNA communications software, Communications Solutions Inc, has come up with a link between the Unix uucp file transfer software and IBM hosts running DisOSS and SNADS (CI No 740). Called UUCP/Connect, it provides automatic conversion of file formats between uucp and DisOSS, and currently runs under System V.2 with a V.3 version under development. The OEM price, source presumably, is $25,000; other existing Communications Solutions OEM customers include Unisys Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co.
