U.S. companies want common standards

Press, 4 February 1986, Page 28

U.S. companies want common standards

By

ANDREW POLLACK,

NZPA-AAPSan Francisco

The United States leading computer companies are about to make a major effort to develop standards that will allow machines made by different manufacturers to communicate with one another and share information. Some 18 manufacturers of computer and telecommunications equipment, including giants such as Digital Equipment Corporation, Burroughs Corporation and American Telephone and Telegraph Company, have agreed to form a new non-profit organisation that will specify standards and test for compliance. According to officials Involved, final plans for the organisation, to be called the Corporation for Open Systems, are to be made at meetings later this month and in early March.

If the new group succeeds, which even its organisers say will not be easy, it will have major ramifications for computer makers and users. Users would be able to mix and match machines and components from different vendors into a complete system, much as consumers can buy a stereo turntable from one manufacturer, speakers from another and an amplifier from a third and be assured in advance that they will work together. Machines now made by different companies have difficulty communicating. A document typed on a

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Wang word processor, for instance, cannot easily be sent to and edited on an IBM word processor. An engineering diagram stored in a Digital Equipment minicomputer cannot be viewed and modified by someone with a Hewlett-Packard workstation. The lack of standards has frustrated computer users, who want to connect all the computers in their offices and factories into networks to exchange information.

Many analysts and executives think that such lack of connectivity contributed to the slowdown in the growth of computer sales last year.

General Motors Corporation, one of the largest United States computer users, became so frustrated that it took matters into its own hands and developed its own standards for connecting computers, machine tools, robots and other electronics in a factory. It now appears that G.M.’s manufacturing automation protocol, or MAP, will become the industry standard for factories.

The new corporation will attempt to do for office, laboratory and other computers what MAP does for factory devices. “The intent is to foster that result everywhere,”

said Mr David Martin, president of National Advanced Systems, a mainframe vendor that is a member of the new corporation. Organisers are also hoping that standards will loosen the commanding share of the market held by IBM, which Is prominently absdnt from the list of the 18 initial members of the new corporation.

IBM dominates the United States market for mainframes, the large central computers used by most corporations. Other companies have adopted IBM’s standards for connecting machines, known as the Systems Network Architecture, but using a system controlled by IBM puts the other companies at a disadvantage. The initial impetus behind the new organisation came from the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group that has long made an issue of IBM’s dominance.

The new group’s organisers are publicly avoiding anti-IBM statements, however, and say the computer giant has been asked to join and will probably accept. A spokesperson for IBM said the company would attend an organisational meeting for the new corporation on January 23, but had not yel decided whether to join.

She said the standards favoured by the new organisation could co-exist with the Systems Network Architecture.

As envisioned, the new corporation, to be based in or near Washington, would act as sort of an Underwriters Laboratories for the computer industry. It would choose specifications from among existing standards and would develop tests to see whether computers meet the specifications. It would then issue a certification for those computers that do. The corporation would have its own staff and a budget of as much as SUSB million (SNZI6 million) to SUSIO million (SNZ2O million) a year, according to Mr A. Biddle, the president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. The 18 initial members have agreed to contribute $U5125,000 ($NZ250,000) each for the first year, and SUS2OO,OOO ($NZ400,000) each for the second year, Mr Biddle said. Other computer sellers, as well as companies that use computers, will be invited to join.

The members, in addition to those mentioned, are Amdahl, Control Data, Harris, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, NCR, Northern Telecom, PerkinElmer, Sperry, Tandem Computers, Telex, Wang Laboratories and Xerox.

Also signing up was Bell Communications Research, a co-operative venture of the regional Bell telephone companies.