PROFESSIONAL

COMPUTINGTHE MAGAZINE OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMPUTER SOCIETY OCTOBER 1991

e 1980's was the decade of •ely the decade of Infornuis sur

a Processing, the 1990's ation Management

A P S C 0 R E ECEOApscore International

EXPRESS What You NeedFrom Decision Support!

Management effectiveness, the competitive edge. It's being on top of the current situation, fully aware of the reasons behind the numbers and positioned to make sound decisions.

It's an enormous challenge because all too often, de­cision makers are tost in a maze of inconsistent data or simplified reports that mask the real answers.

Express/EIS is the next generation of Executive Infor­mation System. It provides an interactive environment for executives to electronically review, annotate and refine information. The result? Express/EIS is an execu­tive information system that alerts the executive to the important "news" in the data, provides line managers with powerful query and trend capabilities, and gives analysts the powerful, integrated analysis capabilities of the EXPRESS Decision Support System. Express/EIS, on mainframe, LAN or PC is what you need from

Decision Support!

FOR A FREE EIS II INFORMATION KFFCALL

V (02) 970 6222

ib information, resources*]

Strength to the arm ofOpen Systems

THE conference of the former Australian Unix User Group, now with a new name, in Sydney in late September was a gathering which in­cluded representatives from all of the principal open

systems bodies from around the world.

If there was a message that came through it was that the idea that there is still any vendor trying to maintain an island of ‘proprietaryism (ness?)’ is in decline.

Obviously, for marketing reasons vendors with strong proprietary interests will set out to protect that share of the market, but universally they are in support of a movement gathering momentum with surprising speed.

The last half of November in Washington will be an exciting place for those with a thirst for open system developments.

First is the Xtra’91 congress of X/Open, an or­ganisation with all the major computer manufactur­ers in Europe, USA and Japan as corporate mem­bers, and strong User, ISV and Systems vendor councils as part of the process for determining user requirements.

All hardware vendors will be there, and most of the large IS Vs.

The following week, the User Alliance for Open Systems has its conference in the same hotel.

Although this alliance jealously excludes vendors from membership to maintain the purity of their ‘user’ image, there is to be an ‘Industry Power Panel’ with senior people from IBM, Apple, Digital, Hew­lett Packard, NCR, Santa Cruz Operation and Allen Bradley.

The strength of user commitment is also shown by the list of members of the Alliance’s working group preparing the business case toolkit.

The importance of establishing the need for open systems as part of a sound business strategy has been part of the Alliance’s program for most of its history.

The membership and objectives of this program is described briefly in Opening Moves.

All we need now is strong unified Australian user commitment.

TONY BLACKMORE

PROFESSIONAL

COMPUTINGCONTENTS: OCTOBER 1991

CREATING A SUCCESSFUL EIS: Successful Executive Information Systems (EIS) are powerful tools which can improve the way organisations are managed and contribute to the overall success of the organisation. But studies show that 40 per cent of EIS implementations fail. 2

EIS: LESSONS FROM EUROPE: This article, based primarily on the company’s experiences in the UK and Europe, examines markets and applications in the EIS arena from a world-wide perspective. 6

GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS ALSO SERVE:The importance to a manager of being able to visualise his company’s data for the purpose of identifying the sales, transport route, market area and many other, to date, textually bound entities is becoming increasingly important in today’s economic climate. 9

OPENING MOVES: The open systems comment returns. 13

REGULAR COLUMNS ACS in View 19:

PROFESSIONAL

COMPUTING'Hr mmam of thf apstswm* oompojbp sooet* cctcceo tsss

it srttlf l*.r tkfsOt Off itif&mjtion W««ipw."

COVER:APSCORE International is a wholly Australian-owned compa­ny with overseas offices in Denver, USA, and London, UK. Founded in 1983, Apscore has enjoyed steady growth since its creation and its achievements have been rewarded by numer­ous industry awards for innovation including the prestigious AITA 1989 “Achiever of the Year” award.

As a software supplier, Apscore is committed to a policy of supplying leading edge horizontal products. Apscore Interna­tional is an authorised reseller of Universe and Unidata and has an active and close relationship with both Vmark and Unidata Australasia. The Apscore Unix Business Centres work closely with other divisions of Apscore such as our Hotline Support Centre, Apscore Professional Services and our R&D division to provide a complete range of services for the Pick- /Unix market.

To obtain more information on how the Apscore Unix Busi­ness Centres or any of our other divisions can help you, please call Apscore on (02) 953 8411 or (008)251 036.

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 1

EXECUTIVE INFORMATION

Creating successful EISby Chris Murray

THE demand by senior management for EIS is growing fast. An Australian survey con­ducted late last year by Coopers & Lybrand estimated that 70 per cent of our larger

companies and 40 per cent of smaller companies are planning to implement an EIS. In the USA, researchers estimate that 45 per cent of the For­tune 500 companies already have an EIS in place. Worldwide, major hardware vendors are developing their EIS strategies and consulting firms have targeted EIS consulting services as a major growth area.

In Australia, many IT professionals and EIS consultants are now faced with the daunting task of designing, implementing and supporting an EIS in an environment where:■ current methodologies for ensuring that EIS

supports key business objectives are inadequate

■ the IES must be able to adapt to dramatic changes in information requirements, business structure and technology.

■ EIS is migrating downwards, and is now wide­ly expected to meet the needs of middle man­agement as well as senior executives

■ the demand for more cost effective solutions using the emerging open systems standards is gathering momentum.

STREAMLINE Systems is one of Australia’s small IT export success stories. Founded by Chris Murray in 1973, Streamline has a track record of designing and implementing leading edge systems for senior management.

Successful products have included Qicplan, the first decision support system on a mini computer which achieved 1100 sites worldwide including 800 in the USA; the Streamline Executive Information System released last year; the recently released GOALFocus, the first product to fully computerise the strate­gic planning process and integrate it with EIS to achieve automated goal performance tracking, and now SmartACTION, at the point of release, which provides on-line coordination of teams and individuals actions, integrated with the strategic plan.

Murray’s background helps explain his 19 year marathon drive to design the ultimate EIS. By the age of 20, he had a Masters and first class honours in Mathematics, and had successfully set up and run a trucking company to fill in his spare time as a student. He went straight to work for the respected manage­ment consultancy W D Scott (now merged with Coopers & Lybrand) as a consultant and experienced the frustration of seeing recommendations for large organisations accepted but not implemented. After two years, Murray left to lecture in information systems at the University of Technology. During this time he also set up the forerunner of Streamline Systems to design, implement and market a decision support system on a mini computer (minis being the ultimate in executive-friendliness in those days).

Early clients included Farley & Lewers, later to become a subsidiary of CSR. The system, fully implemented by 1976, was probably Australia’s first Execu­tive Information System. It included trends, comparisons, forecasts and key performance indicators in graphical format for each of the organisation’s geo­graphically spread business units.

What has been Streamline’s secret of continuing success? “Close working relationships with many forward thinking chief executives has been critical to understanding the needs of senior executives and designing appropriate sys­tems,” Murray said. “The other factor has been an investment of 25 per cent of total revenues in R & D over 19 years.”

Successful Executive Information Systems (EIS) are powerful tools which can improve the way organisations are managed and contribute to the overall success of the organisation. But studies show that 40 per cent of EIS implementations fail.

To add to the challenge, because senior man­agement is intimately involved, the success or failure of the EIS project will be highly visible.Current methods of ensuring the EIS re­lates to critical business needs

There are two common methods of integrating corporate goals into the EIS, but both have seri­ous drawbacks.

The “ad hoc” method involves identifying an apparent need and jumping straight to prototyp­ing an EIS application. The rationale is that the executive will see something he wants, become enthusiastic, and then find new uses for the EIS.

At the August 1991 Executive and Strategic Information Systems conference hosted by HR in Sydney, David DeLong, visiting Australia for the conference, pointed out that this method often results in:■ a lack of clear objectives for the EIS■ the spark required to visualise an EIS based on

corporate direction not being generated by the particular problem which has been solved

■ executives who don’t know the computer’s ca­pabilities underestimating or overestimating what can be achieved

■ an EIS which is not related to the overall stra­tegic plan of the organisation, and is likely to be short-term and designed for a few execu­tives rather than long term and with organisa­tion-wide potential.The second more advanced method involves

beginning with consultants, either internal or ex­ternal, and the organisation’s strategic plan. As­suming this plan is recent, comprehensive and meaningful to the top team, then the vision, mission and corporate goals of the organisation will be laid out. Theoretically the EIS consultants can now derive the critical success factors or performance indicators that support the strategic plan, and build the EIS to provide these perfor­mance indicators.

The EIS consultants however, are still likely to run into the following problems:■ the strategic plan may be out of date before the

EIS is up and running■ the needs of leaders in organisations may still

not be supported. For example, a chief execu­tive may turn on his EIS and see many perfor­mance indicators, some positive and some negative, and still not be able to determine how successful his organisation is now, how successful it will be in a year’s time, or how far he has progressed towards achieving his corpo­rate goals

■ the relative importance and contribution of ongoing activities and projects throughout the organisation towards the overall success of the organisation is not clear

■ accountability is not determined. For example, the success of individual business units, teams and people towards achieving the corporate goals is often unclear.At best, using older methodologies we end up

with an EIS which supported the strategic plan at one point in time but does not take into account the fast changing global business environment or the changing perceptions of the leaders through­out the organisation.

2 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

Because the linkage between performance indi­cators and success at all levels of the organisation is not clearly defined, EIS also fails to address many of the needs of the leaders of the organisa­tion. These leaders think in terms of direction, change, priorities, context, people, creativity, per­formance, motivation, teamwork, and the inte­grated impact of projects, but none of these is­sues are really addressed by an EIS.The birth of Strategic Information Sys­tems

In May of this year Streamline Systems re­leased the first Strategic Information System de­signed to overcome the inherent limitations of EIS by adding new functionality.

The Streamline Strategic Information System consists of three modules which can be used separately but are designed to work together in an open systems environment.

The modules are:■ Streamliner, an enterprise-wide integrated

EIS/DSS with all standard EIS functionality such as drill down, exception reporting, ad hoc, graphics etc.

■ GOALFocus, which extends the corporate di­rection throughout the organisation, providing a framework for the integration and coordina­tion of all strategies and projects, and automat­ing tracing of performance towards the achievement of corporate goals. One of the inputs to GOALFocus is performance indica­tors from the EIS/DSS.

■ SmartACTION, which tracks issues, ideas and actions throughout the organisation, enabling people at all levels to manage teams, commu­nicate relevant information to the right people, assist with preparation for meetings, follow up all actions and automatically create reports on progress towards any aspect of the strategic plan. SmartACTION is driven by GOALFocus which provides information on organisation structure, teams and goals.For the hundreds of EIS users worldwide who

have already made a major commitment to a specific EIS solution, the ability to upgrade to a Strategic Information System is an attractive fu­ture option. The advanced modules of the Strate­gic Information System (GOALFocus and Smar­tACTION) can be integrated with an existing EIS, adding value to the existing investment by making it better meet the needs of leaders throughout the organisation.

The Strategic Information System is currently being implemented in eleven large organisations around Australia. Judging by the impact this product and methodology is having on the local EIS market and feedback from international ex­perts, it seems likely that these Australian de­signed breakthroughs will change the EIS indus­try worldwide.

Benefits of Strategic Information Sys­tems

The benefits to the organisation of adopting the new Strategic Information Systems philoso­phy include:■ more relevant EIS which provides perfor­

mance indicators to track success in achieving all of the corporate goals, taking into account changing priorities and consolidating up to one success graph for the organisation

■ faster, less costly and less painful implementa­tion of the strategic plan by integrating it into the information systems of the organisation. The automated strategic plan thus becomes an evolving tool for directing the organisation in a

An Executive Information System is?Defining an EIS is becoming increasingly difficult in a decade which has seen the term misused to cover various combinations of spreadsheets, 4GLs, graph­ics and statistical packages.

Most experts would agree with the following definition from international research organisation, IDC:

An EIS is a decision support application which focuses on the needs of top- level management. It is data-retrieval intensive and normally provides an intuitive user interface. The primary objectives of EIS applications are to enable executives to more effectively monitor key business factors. Common features of commercial EIS software include:■ Drill down, allowing users to easily investigate the data behind the data for more detail■ Exception reporting, highlighting data that is unusual or outside of desig­nated ranges■ Access to external databases in addition to internal data for better-informed decision making■ Integration with office systems, enabling users to communicate more effi­ciently.Successful organisation-wide EISs are nearly always based on decision sup­

port systems (DSS) which give executives, middle management and analysts “What ... if?”, ad hoc query and forecasting capabilities to back up the EIS “what is?” capabilities described above. In fact DSS and EIS are very much merging technologies with the newer EIS products fully integrated with their DSS building blocks.

Recent advances in EIS technology have resulted in automated strategic planning and dynamic management of teams being integrated with traditional EIS. These new systems are referred to as Strategic Information Systems.

changing environment, rather than an out of date document in the top drawer

■ all information workers develop a clear mental model of the organisation giving them a com­mon language, and an awareness of impor­tance, progress, effectiveness, quality and suc­cess

■ success is defined for each person and business unit, focussing the whole organisation on do­ing the right things and achieving success

■ tracking of this success means that employees, managers, business units and teams are recog­nised for doing the right things well

■ short term, medium term and long term goals are monitored and linked to projects, actions,

^Applying information technology to meet the needs of business leaders throughout organisations is a major challenge and growth area of the 1990s.

INCREASING RELEVANCE TO SENIOR

EXECUTIVES

1970's 19S0s 1990's

v. Iv

IV

T STRATEGIC 1 INFORMATION

L SYSTEMS ,

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 3

►Chris Murray, managing director of Streamline Systems

▼Key elements of a Strategic Information System

issues, ideas, teams, team objectives, and indi­vidual responsibilities and accountabilities. Two Australian users of the Streamline Strate­

gic Information System, Telecom Country Divi­sion and McIntosh Securities, implemented the system for different reasons.Keeping on track in a rapidly changing environment

Chris Ballenden, associate director and head of IT, said McIntosh Securities chose the Strategic Information System instead of a standard EIS in

LEADERSHIPMETHODOLOGY

IntegratedChange

lanagement

AutomatedStrategicPlanning

/ issues & Ideas

ManagementGoal \

Performance Tracking

TotalQuality

ManagementProject Tracking ^

& Team Management

AutomatedReport

AuthoringGroupware

PerformanceRewardSystem

Performance /Tracking /Executive

/Information v / System/'v / Decision

Support

Program ^ Management A

Financial \ Personnel S Operations Systems

MANAGEMENTMETHODOLOGY

order to help the organisation stick to its strategic plan while capitalising on short term opportuni­ties.

McIntosh is publicly listed and one of the larg­est stock broking firms in Australia. “Although we are an extensive user of technology, and it is one of the most important components of our strategy, we realised that technology alone would not give us a lasting competitive edge”, Ballen­den said. “Execution and opportunism are more important, because we are in an industry where we need to be able to put together a team to design, construct and market a new product within a month or two. In this fast moving envi­ronment, we need a centralised system to mea­sure profitability without changing our software or bringing in armies of pen-pushers,” he said.

“The EIS component of the Strategic Informa­tion. System has successfully speeded up the pro­cess of tracking profitability. We do not have to wait for weeks or months to get the good or bad news. But we still can’t tell if we are on track with our strategic plan, so we are implementing the GOALFocus software to assess the degree of change, our progress, effectiveness and the quali­ty of work to give us a measure of our success”.Implementing the strategic plan using a Strategic Information System

Wayne Lock, general manager Strategic Plan­ning, Telecom Country Division, has the chal­lenging responsibility of refining and implement­ing the Strategic Plan for a business in an environment which includes dramatic change, over 10,000 staff, 99 per cent of the landmass of Australia, and hundreds of ongoing projects to track.

Lock had previously been looking for systems to provide support in assigning clear accountabil­ity, tracking performance of strategic projects, and ensuring that all behaviour and allocation of resources is consistent with the organisation’s long term objectives. “I had not found any prod­uct capable of handling more than one small element of the puzzle,” he said.

“When I heard about the Strategic Information System, it sounded too good to be true so it was essential to prove it. My test was that the System must accommodate all the critical elements of my Strategic Planning Methodology, assist with the translation of goals and strategies into action, and map action and performance to the organisa­tion’s key result areas and the accountabilities of individual managers. If this could be done it would be possible to make the Strategic Plan happen and use it to really drive the organisa­tion. I am pleased to report that my test has been met and I am proceeding to implementation,” he said.

Developing cost-effective solutionsResearch organisation, The Gartner Group,

predicts that LAN solutions running under Unix will dominate EIS architectures by 1994 at the expense of the currently dominant mainframe solutions, potentially saving large USA EIS users $200,000 to $300,000 in total systems costs each year.

Nearly all the major EIS vendors have re­sponded to market pressure for more cost-effec­tive EIS solutions by planning or releasing some kind of Unix version. In the future, it seems likely that mainframes will continue to be used for data handling and to feed the EIS, which will probably reside on a Unix file server. Benefits can include not slowing down the mainframe by having it driving the EIS, and making sure that

4 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

the EIS itself runs fast enough to meet the exact­ing needs of executives and management.

In the coming era of open systems, the trend is very much to implement systems that fit the client environment with the minimum disrup­tion or cost. For example, Streamline Systems has made a commitment to the new industry standards by redeveloping its products for an open systems Unix environment. Characteristics include the ability to use any of the major rela­tional databases, Oracle, Ingres, Informix etc, in­tegration with existing client databases to mini­mise duplication of data, and Windows 3 support for PC workstations.

The future of EISAlthough the Streamline Strategic Information

System has been endorsed by many experts as the future of EIS, we believe that EIS and even Strategic Information Systems are only in their infancy.

We see the whole science of applying technol­ogy to meet the needs of leaders as one of the major challenges and growth areas of the 1990s.

EIS implementors and recommenders need to choose a solution which provides immediate benefits, does not lock the organisation out of the growing open systems environment, and enables new EIS technology to be applied as major ad­vances are made.

▼A Strategic Information System filters information collected by other systems and presents it to executives in the context of the corporate direction and priorities.

-\!=&MV£ '' LRlrC llUa-OUlU Ui sXSilHtMJ

Author: Chris Murray is managing director, Streamline Systems Pty Ltd.

FEBRUARYFEATURE

Development environments and CASE

The pressure to perform leads to application development using a host of competing methodologies with the vendors all pointing to their successes with this or that major user. How widely is Case being accepted? Is there a future for stand-alone 4GLs? Maximum utilisation of a system requires reliable performancemeasurement and capacity management. To what extent does this influence the choice of development tools?(Software products inc stand­

alonePC based products, consulting

services and publications)Editorial enquiries phone Tony Blackmore

(03) 5205565PROFESSIONAL

COMPUTINGTHE MAGAZINE OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMPUTER SOCIETY

|U|T|SiUNIVERSITY

OF TECHNOLOGY

S Y D N E Y

School of Computing SciencesKEY CENTRE FOR ADVANCED COMPUTING SCIENCES

MASTERS DEGREE IN COMPUTING BY COURSEWORK

For application forms telephone(02) 330 1990 and ask for UTS Information Service

The MAppSc (by Coursework) in Information Science is a professional qualification in Computing. The programme is flexible and enables students either to specialise in their chosen area within Information Science, or to equip themselves for a professional position in corporate management.

This degree course is only available on a part- time basis over three years. Attendance is usually required for two or three evenings a week during semester.

Information Evening6.00pm Monday 14 October Room 411, Building 2 University of Technology, Sydney 15-73 Broadway

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 5

EXECUTIVE INFORMATION

Holistic Systems develops, markets and supports an integrated Executive Information and Decision Support System throughout Europe, the United States and the Asia Pacific region. This article, based primarily on the company’s experiences in the UK and Europe, examines markets and applications in the EIS arena on a world-wide perspective.

EIS: Lessons from Europeby Derek Taylor

HOLISTIC carried out research into EIS during 1986 and early 1987 and hence was able to review the success or otherwise of early projects. Mistakes have been made,

there are success stories all of which can help anyone embarking on an EIS project today.Europe vs Australia

It should not be assumed that Australia neces­sarily lags significantly behind the US and Euro­pean markets. While the US and the UK may be ahead we do not believe that the take up in Continental Europe is as advanced as in Austra­lia. This is probably both for language and cultur­al reasons (most EIS products have UK or US origins).

Further while organisations may have had EIS projects underway since the first purpose built EIS software products emerged in 1985 and some earlier still, many organisations are still evaluat­ing the technology and how it may fit their or­ganisation.Early systems

We found that the first generation EIS systems installed focused on the senior executive end user. They reflected his/her personal require­ments and style very strongly. They provided access to external and internal information of both a “hard” and “soft” variety and made good use of graphics, touch screens or mouse etc.

There were however a surprising number of organisations who felt that their EIS projects had not delivered. While they provided senior execu­tives with “hands on” information they had not had the overall positive impact on the organisa­tion that was anticipated.

We found a large number of reasons behind these views; some which were so specific to the organisation concerned there were no generic les­sons to be learned. However some issues could assist other potential EIS users.Over personalisation

Early EIS theory suggested that a key element in getting a EIS project off the ground was identi­fying a senior executive sponsor. Sometimes this sponsorship dominated the project to its detri­ment.

The EIS was built essentially to the specifica­tion of the sponsor reflecting his personal re­quirements. If that sponsor subsequently changed roles or left the organisation a “new” EIS was required again reflecting the personal needs of the end user.Credibility of the EIS information

The information collected to “feed” the EIS was often generated solely for that purpose. It was not available to executives and managers who were not part of the EIS user base even though the information described the perfor­mance of their own departments/divisions. Hence when questions were asked based upon

the EIS information, responses could well be “the information is wrong”, “I haven’t seen the information as yet”, how can I comment” etc.

If further action by the manager was required he would need to find the source material that fed the EIS before being able to comment or take action.

Hence certain EIS systems became a source of conflict rather than a common basis of under­standing which would allow the organisation to move forward.

The EIS user community sometimes used dif­ferent sources for their information. For example the manufacturing directors perception of “sales” differed from the sales director’s view, with the finance director having a third view causing a further source of misunderstanding.Maintenance burden/currentness

For EIS to be effective they need to be current, “out of date” is the same as inaccurate. The effort required to keep an EIS up-to-date is a function of several factors including:

■ Availability of Source data■ Degree of Personalisation of the EIS■ Architecture of the EIS installed.Some EISs consumed enormous manpower re­

sources in order to stay current and often were unable to do so. In such a scenario, users re­turned to older systems as the “edge” they had anticipated was not forthcoming.

In light of the above factors the value of many EIS projects was questioned. The end result often being that while the projects were not abandoned completely, the system fell into disuse, i.e. used for diary management and occasionally switched on to impress visiting dignitaries.Success

Clearly there were also major successes. Most of these tended to be in the very large corpora­tions where the EIS was used at Group Board Level. The focus was primarily on external rather than internal data and there was no requirement to integrate this system with systems used by the individual corporations who were members of the group. They were oriented to watch external factors, e.g. share value vs competitors for spot­ting acquisition opportunities etc. The internal data was not time critical and often simply re­flected monthly (or quarterly) figures from indi­vidual group members.

SummaryIn summary our findings could be itemised as

follows:■ Existing EISs could work for major groups at

the group level.■ Hands on use by senior executives can be ef­

fective■ Greater concentration is required on making

the EIS the common focus of information.■ To be more effective in a wider range of organi­

sations the user base needs to extend its other management levels.

■ While the pressure for rapid implementation is high, the on-going maintenance and support is a major issue which can make or break the project.In light of the above a number of organisations

6 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

who already had an EIS installed (though per­haps not used) looked again at EIS. This time with a new set of criteria which were an exten­sion of the earlier criteria.

Gartner Group have described systems that address those broader requirements as “new gen­eration” EISs.“New generation EISs”

The additional EIS requirements included the following:

■ EISs need a common base of information so that all users have a common view of what’s happening.

■ In order that middle level executive can re­spond to situations highlighted by an EIS they also need access. This is not to say that all EIS information is available to everybody (that’s a security issue) but simply that a wider user base at a number of levels is necessary to make the EIS effective in influencing the direction and success of an organisation.

■ The maintenance of the system needs to be automated wherever possible and designed to cope with changes both in volume and structure in the underlying feeder systems in order to avoid the maintenance nightmare and yet remain current.

■ EISs themselves need to be more dynamic with ability to look forward, test alternate scenar­ios etc. Not because senior executives wished to become a business analyst or decision support expert but simply carry out some analyses his­torically associated with Decision Support “sim­ply” without leaving the EIS environment. This way the EIS could “look forward” not just report on history.

Underlying technology trendsIndependent of the activity in the EIS arena a

number of other trends in the general informa­tion systems arena were occurring which impact­ed the way people viewed their EIS activities.

These included:■ Use of standard relational databases (and

SQL) as the basis of many information sys­tems.

■ Client Server architectures where two proces­sors share the tasks each carrying out the tasks most appropriate to it.

■ Open Systems (and Unix in particular) provid­ing better price/performance environments, more portable systems.

Relating these back to the EIS arenaThe use of SQL based relational databases is

widespread with more and more underlying op­erational systems being based on them. The trend that data should be stored independently from the applications that used it is very strong. It allows for data to be captured and stored once and made available to the applications that need it. The ability for the EIS to dynamically access such data provides one of the best methods of ensuring automatic and dynamic updates. EIS users want to achieve this without having to become involved with writing SQL and without replicating the data in some proprietary EIS data­base where duplication would generate potential confusion.

That’s not to say that all EIS users have all underlying systems in neat orderly SQL data­bases. Most have data in many forms which need bringing together for EIS. The challenge is to

A wider user base at a number of levels is necessary to make the EIS effective in influencing the direction and success of an organisation.

PICK O UNIX MIGRATIONWE GUARANTEE IT!

APSCORE

Apscore is Australia's leading Pick/Unix integrator,

We will integrate your existing Pick system into an Open Systems environment (Unix) whilst main­taining your investment in your Pick applications.

Apscore are hardware inde­pendent and we guarantee the entire migration process.

Telephone our Unix Business Centres for an independent quotation.

(02)953 8411 (008)251036

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 7

Elements of the EIS can coexist with operational systems allowing ready extraction of data.

automate data acquisition despite the range of underlying systems which range from paper sys­tems to relational databases. However as the trend towards “relational” continues it becomes easier to provide an elegant solution that mini­mise maintenance yet provide dynamic automat­ic updating.Architectures

Architectures for EIS systems in Europe fall broadly into two camps.1. The approach where data is loaded into the PC

for manipulation locally.2. Where the PC and some form of host comput­

er “cooperate” sharing tasks.An example of architecture (1) is the Com­

mander product from Comshare. Examples of approach (2) are Command Centre from Pilot and Holistic Systems product Holos.

This co-operative processing approach is simi­lar to the emerging client server architecture and is particularly appropriate for the “new genera­tion” systems. Information is held centrally and is sharable. Elements of the EIS can coexist with operational systems allowing ready extraction of data. Where this is inappropriate the server sys­tems may be networked into the operational sys­tems. The users workstation (the client) can con­centrate on handling the user interface, graphics, windows, etc and hence the amount of informa­tion handleable is not limited by the size of the PC or Mac or the “bandwidth” of the communi­cations link.Open systems

Open systems are now making a large impact on the whole of the information systems arena with all the major hardware manufacturers offer­ing some if not all the elements of such systems. Not only does this environment offer potentially cheaper computing than proprietary architec­tures. It provides the opportunity to link differ­ent applications, share data etc across networks maximising return on existing investments.

In the EIS environment the move is away from proprietary environments generally, not just from an operating system environment. If users are wishing to base all their information in SQL database they don’t want to be forced to intro­duce a proprietary database for their EIS. Simi­larly for Mail systems and other underlying sys­tems. The EIS trend is for systems that fit an environment with the minimum disruption to that environment.

Other requirementsRequirements as expressed by potential users

of EIS systems or as documented in Requests for tender still include the traditional facilities. Drill Down, Hot Spotting, Graphics, Spotlight Charts, External News and Share services, Icon Driving Touchscreen etc. However, now there are many additional requirements emerging driven by one or more of the above.

Some examples are:A major Electrical Utility in Europe recently

acquired an EIS system. They evaluated a num­ber of products. In addition to the normal EIS criteria, their major concern was close integra­tion with their Office Automation Systems (All­in-One). Every user accessed all information sys­tems through All-in-One. They required a system that would closely integrate not simply interface. At the end of the day this was the primary crite­ria.

A North Sea oil exploration company wanted an EIS. Their primary concerns were not finan­cial data but performance of their drilling activi­

ties, e.g. barrel per day by platform etc. Again, the criteria included all the standard criteria for EISs, but this time the major criteria was direct access to their “Drilling Database” which was automatically updated by the drilling sites. The database concerned was Oracle. The currentness of the information was crucial hence extracting data into some form of “EIS database” was unac­ceptable.

The National Grid is the power distribution part of the UK’s Electrical Utility industry. When privatised in 1990 it took the opportunity to lay down some standards for all information systems activity. Essentially these were Open Systems Ar­chitecture, all information systems were to be based in Oracle. That meant that their Account­ing System Maintenance Scheduling System, Project Management Systems etc were all to use Oracle as the “data holder”. The EIS which was to bring together information eventually from all these systems needed to fit the environment, again without duplication of information.

The trend is strongly toward ensuring EIS fits closely into the overall information systems strategy with minimal data duplication and maintenance as the goals.

Whether the “new generation” are really EISs is arguable, however it’s also irrelevant. Trends toward integrated information systems with us­ers at all levels using information systems to become more successful, gain competitive edge etc is a strong trend in Europe and points the direction for what is already happening or going to happen internationally.

Author: Derek Taylor is chairman of Holistic Sys­tems Limited of the U.K. The company operates in Australia as Holis Management Systems Pty Ltd.

THE KEY TO COMPETITIVE ^ADVANTAGE...

... IS HELD BY YOUR EMPLOYEES!The second edition of VOCATION: Human Resources in

Australia and New Zealand will help you unlock your most valuable resource - your employees.

TOPICS SUCH AS:• “Reaping full benefits of high-tech computer technology”• “Item effort a must to provide good customer service"• “Faster way to end company disputes" y 0®• “Contract professionals boost profits” ^

Order your copy of Vocation now and unleash your workforce today! ...at $29.25 incl postage f

POST THE

BELOW TO:

Tina AngeramiMarketing Services Department Peter Isaacson Publications Pty Ltd Freepost 1 PO Box 172 Prahran VIC 3181or fax: 0-3-521 3647 Attn: Tina Angerami or phone: 008-335 196 toll-free

8 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

Geographic Information Systems also serveby David Lewis

FOR many business people the term GIS (Geographic Information System) is either unknown or, to those who have a comput­ing background, it means a large and very

powerful piece of software designed to display the earth’s rise and fall and to allow “earth sci­ences” to be represented in a map of computer images.

This was very much the way until the advent of PC-based GISs. Most businesses have a com­puter based accounting system and other func­tions in residence on a PC or have networks of PCs attached to a mainframe with that software for their business operations. GISs however, were not considered because there was always the need for a very large, powerful number cruncher to perform the many calculations to produce the “maps” that were associated with this form of software. And anyway: “Who needs to know the geology or landform of a sales territory”. This was a popular misconception of what was possi­ble with GIS software.

PC-based GIS software has most of the func­tionality of its larger cousins operating on work­stations and mainframes but has been developed with the user in mind. Perhaps at this stage a brief history would be appropriate.

Apart from the large computer systems that were needed to run a GIS there was also an unwritten understanding that a certain level of specialised knowledge was required to drive such “complicated” software to obtain its initial bene­

fits. As an organisation, you would need not only the machine but a collection of individuals with varying skills from surveying to geological spe­cialists to cartographers to prime the software with the necessary maps upon which any data you had could be displayed or manipulated.

Once you had produced some form of output, you then needed specialists in the area of, for example, marketing or transport to interpret the output and advise on action to take to obtain more market share or reduce costs of distribution or whatever the exercise was that the organisa­tion was carrying out.

This obviously meant that such an exercise was limited to those organisations whose busi­ness environment was fairly static or predictable, because the development of such a solution as just outlined may take some months to achieve. It certainly ruled out those industries or situa­tions where speed of response and ability to make gut feel decisions were paramount as much as did the initial costs of setting up such a project may have entailed.

PCs have educated many people to the delights of computing by making the interface simple. People do not have to remember the unusual codes or strings of numbers and letters, back­slashes and so on which went with computing in the past. The advent of the Macintosh and the development of Microsoft Windows have seen an even greater acceptance of computers. People who five years ago would not have used a com­puter in their daily work lives, now admit to being lost without one.

When we consider the objective of most busi­nesses, it is to make a profit by providing a service or product to the buyer in a way guaran-

VContinued page 12

The importance to a manager of being able to visualise his company’s data for the purpose of identifying the sales, transport route, market area and many other, to date, textually bound entities is becoming increasingly important in today’s economic climate.

This article discusses some of the rapid changes that have occurred in Australia in the field of Geographic Information Systems and their use in these situations to present a company executive with a more instantaneous understanding of his position in the market place.

» file Edit Analyze Table Style Btimhsu* BtotmeUlfl_Tou»ns»WB„.P«S TCOTMMap

IffiilE

IBR-Jouins Brounet sacPsHAME

U Tat-W -Towr.-

gappatt

GASCOVHE JOHCTMt

GhOOU

GiLL&OAFi

V.’ -

KWSaiA

BEACH

>ALS?» A

<The Macintosh and the development of Microsoft Windows have helped make interfacing with GISs simple

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 9

ADDITIONAL PCP ENDORSED CASESPCP HOURS

PANSOPHICTelon Users conference 14

Contact Prue Palmer (02) 906 4400 SARNIA TRAINING SERVICESPeople Skills 6

Contact Tim Harvey (02) 550 6226 ERNST & YOUNG CONSULTINGJoint Application Development 18

Contact Paul Trundley (02) 248 4002 SOFTWAY

Contact Elizabeth Mahy (02) 698 2322Commercial Impact of Open Systems 6Introduction to TCP/IP and the Internet 12UNIX System V Release 4 Migration 6UNIX System V Release 4 internals 18-30OSF/1 Internals 24

SOFTWAY in conjunction with ILLAWARRA TECHNOLOGY CENTRE.Contact Elizabeth Mahy (02) 698 2322

UNIX for Users 18-30UNIX for Programmers 18-30UNIX System Administration 18-30Intensive C Programming 30UNIX Communications & Networking 30Programming with X/Windows 30

Bergman Voysey & AssociatesContact Jeff Bergman (02) 2641788AUSTRALIAN COMPUTER SOCIETY

COURSE ENDORSEMENTSCourse Name PCP HOURSQUALITY ASSURANCESeminar/Executive Briefing 6Standards 6Testing 6Defect Analysis/Quality Metrics

6Implementation/AS3563 — Developing Your Quality Manual 6Requirements 6Change Control 6Reviews & Audit 6Vendor Quality 6Implementing Quality Assurance (Using QAI Managers Handbook) 12QUALITY ASSURANCE INSTITUTE (QAI) VIDEO COURSESMaking Quality DP Happen 3Worker’s Role and Responsibility in Building Defect-Free Software 6Application System Review 6Testing Application Systems 6How to Install an Information systems Measurement Programme 6Quantitative Problem Analysis 6Estimating 6National Quality Award 3How to Conduct a Code Inspection 6How to Prepare and Use Customer Satisfaction Surveys 6Conducting Acceptance Testing of Application Software 6How to Develop a Test Script 6How to Perform Regression Testing 6Computer Security, Risk Identification and AnalysisSeminar or Comprehensive Audio Package 12Security By Analysis (SBA) Risk IdentificationAssessment and Control 12Information Systems Testing — A Practical Approach 6Certified Quality Analyst Programme 6

10 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

AMDAHL EDUCATIONContact Melbourne: Jurek Moczydlowski Phone 614 4123

Perth: Ian Cleghorn Phone 325 7899 Canberra: Chris Gray Phone 248 3725

Sydney: Jo Potter Phone 964 7888Course Name PCP HoursMVS Concepts and Facilities 12JCL Workshop 27Introduction to TSO/ISPF 18MVS CLIST Programming Workshop 12ISPF Dialog Management Workshop 15REXX for TSO 18VSAM COBOL Application Programming Workshop 27VSAM Fundamentals 27Assembler 1: Assembler Workshop 27Assembler 2: MVS Assembler and Macro Usage Workshop 30Assembler 3: MVS Supervisor and Data Management Workshop 30MVS & JES2 for Operators 30Introduction to MVS 27DASD Concepts 12Storage Management Concepts 15Intro Storage Management Subsystem (SMS) 6SMS Implementation Workshop 24DFHSM Exits and Modifications 24DFHSM Implementation Workshop 30MVS System Fundamentals Workshop 30SMP/E Workshop 27MVS Installation Workshop 27MVS/XA Performance Workshop 27MVS ICF Catalogs 27MVS IPCS Workshop 12MVS Diagnostic Techniques 27MVS/ESA Advanced Facilities 27MVS/ESA Diagnostic Techniques 27MVS/ESA Performance Workshop 27JES2 Customization Workshop 27RACF Administration Workshop 24RACF Installation and Tailoring 6MDF Implementation Workshop 9Teleprocessing Fundamentals 18Basic SNI Coding 6SNA Fundamentals 18SNA Problem Analysis Workshop 30Network Tuning Methodologies 30Network Installation Workshop 30DB2 Concepts and Facilities 12DB2 Applications Programming Workshop 30DB2 Data Base Design and Administration 24DB2 Performance & Tuning Workshop 24DB2 System Fundamentals Workshop 30DB2 System Programming Workshop 24IMS/VS System Fundamentals 27IMS/VS System Programming Workshop 27TPF Concepts for Applications Programmers 30TPF Assembler Workshop 30TPF Concepts for Operators 24TPF Overview 18TPF Internals 30TPF/SNA Workshop 30CICS for Operators 6CICS Overview 6CICS Performance Tuning 18CICS Application Dump Reading 12CICS Application Design Workshop 24CICS Advanced Topics 30CICS Command-Level COBOL Programming 30VTAM/CICS Network Operations 12CICS Programming Techniques 6CICS for System Programmers 24SDF/CICS for Programmers 6UTS/F System Implementation and Administration 24UTS System BX.25 Concepts, Implement and Admin 24UTS System NFS Structure and Diagnostics 30UTS System 4635 Implementation and Administration 12UTS System Local Network Implement and Admin 30UTS System Performance and Tuning 30UTS System Administration 30UTS System Structure and Diagnostics 30UTS System Streams 30UTS System TCP/IP Structure and Diagnostics 30UTS System Fundamentals 24

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 11

►David Lewis, manager Marketing and Product Development, Peripheral Systems

▼PC-based GISs allow the user to read and analyse data visually

iFrom page 9teed to develop some sort of repeat business. The data that businesses have typically held therefore has been in the form of words, and perhaps some diagrams or graphs. If you examine any business operation about a customer database or distribu­tion system you will find that invariably one or more of the fields in that database contain some geographic reference, either to a street address and suburb or postcode or territory number or other location placing mechanism peculiar to the industry.

This element is all that is required by a PC- based GIS to “geocode” that data record. PC- based GISs allow the user to take the data that the company or organisation already owns, color code it, and display it on a map, like a street directory to reveal visually, areas of higher or lower interest.

Of course the application doesn’t stop there. The user who has experienced the ease of prepar­ing a sales campaign with the aid of the visual presentation compared with traditional methods, will wish to see the results through similar graph­ic information, without having to wade through pages of paper.

A picture is indeed worth a thousand words, and it is therefore understandable that through­out the years that mankind has been waging war on itself the quality of the visual spectacle pre­

BMRDeliveriestacit*

feMfifei

imyg -Oltpri :

iifUizS ;

1.96 td U:22m CmntnB

SkkS f* «*l *iit Attafeinte

sented to a field commander has often deter­mined the result.

Business leaders can now access comparable tools for exactly the same purpose. He can see at a glance the disposition of sales to income to expenditure to future development based upon the recent census data that will soon become available. In short, he has a manageable task because of the visual method of display and the speed at which computers can recalculate the situation and do “what if’ analysis and redisplay a changed scenario for consideration.

PC GIS Maplnfo, was released into Australia by Peripheral Systems Pty Ltd towards the end of 1988. Since that time the product has not only taken half the market share in the area of GIS and Desktop Mapping, but has in August been considered the Best Software of the Year at the recent PC’91 exhibition in Melbourne. When that is considered against all the more traditional forms of software that were found at the show it can only mean that the genus of Desktop Map­ping, GIS has finally arrived as a business tool.

The software itself is not sufficient for a GIS package, whether mainframe or PC, to develop the sort of scenarios that I have painted. The thing that most GIS packages must do, once installed is to create the map base upon which to display the organisation’s data. This is often the most expensive and time consuming activity as­sociated with a GIS. That has now changed, com­panies such as Peripheral Systems can provide street network systems, boundary files for post­codes or suburbs, indeed just about any “spatial data” that a business may require to carry out its activities, with a minimum of fuss. Peripheral Systems has developed such a reputation in this area that other GIS suppliers and government authorities use the digital map data produced by the company in their own or Maplnfo GIS soft­ware packages. This means that easy to use soft­ware coupled with readily available Map Bases, allows an end user to get a running start.

Another development that is helping to spread these systems into industry is the number of platforms that support the software. In the case again of Maplnfo, this originally PC-based prod­uct can now be found running under Windows, Macintosh and Unix systems. The advantage is that data files for the maps and boundaries are common across these systems allowing networks already in place to share data.

Some of the applications that are known to be running using Maplnfo as the prime software are: The NRMA’s Aussie Assist program; a dis­tribution route system for Neverfail Springwater; investigative reporting by the Department of So­cial Security and allocation of their shopfront services to better assist the unemployed and wel­fare recipients. The Sydney City Mission, cur­rently engaged in supporting the mass of unem­ployed and homeless people, use a GIS package to assist with their support strategies. Banks, fi­nance institutions, manufacturing companies in the building industry and insurance groups are all turning towards Maplnfo GIS as a way of better managing their data and making it work harder and smarter.

GISs are no longer limited to the large multi­national with unlimited budgets and time to re­spond to the rapidly changing business world, but can now allow even the one man entrepre­neur to exist on equal terms when fighting for and analysing market share or the distribution of his products.Author: David Lewis is manager, Marketing and Product Development for Peripheral Systems Pty Ltd.

12 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

OCTOBER 1991

The same is good:The open systems revolutionby George Shaffner, chief operations officer, X/Open Co

STARTING in 1950, the supply side of the high technology industry was constructed on a simple belief: different is good and same is bad.

The open systems movement has reversed this credo: In open systems, same is good and differ­ent is bad.

This is no less than a revolutionary change. To adapt, the industry must first undo the past: Ten generations of proprietary products, a trillion dollars of installed computers and forty years of “different is good” attitudes.

But to reinvent itself to meet the “same is good” requirements of the future, the high tech­nology community must build a new philosophy of system development and distribution. This philosophy must explain the relationships be­tween standards, products, innovation and com­petition. Unfortunately, no such philosophy ex­ists. Let’s build one, beginning with the fundamental changes in demand that have caused the open systems revolution.1. The demand for application ImmortalityFundamental changes in the use of computers have driven the growth of open systems. The most significant of these are:

1. Virtually all of the low-cost, low-risk, high- return applications have been written. Many of the unwritten applications will yield a high re­turn, but they involve high development costs and high risk.

2. For a long period, perhaps two decades, computers were the engines of improved busi­ness efficiency and effectiveness. Now, large companies have hundreds of millions of dollars of installed computers. Many are obsolete; many cannot talk to one another; but they cannot be unplugged because the business would be at risk. Business can now change faster than computer systems. Technology, once the engine of busi­ness, is now its anchor.

3. Conversion of critical applications to new technologies can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, as much in some cases as new corporate headquarters building. Real estate, however, tends to appreciate over a very long useful life. Computer systems tend to depreciate rapidly over a very short useful life. It is becoming al­most impossible to justify conversion.

4. Any significant changes to the computer system which can be justified must have a strate­gic impact on the business. In the 1990s strategic

decisions are made through consensus of in­formed and well educated senior executives rep­resenting the end user, financial and information technology ■ organizations. Their decisions will not favor products with two to five year life cycles.

5. Major applications are now distributed in­ternationally. The best vendor in Genoa may not be the best vendor in Houston, or even have an office in Caracas.

The only solution to these changes is to create a new type of high technology “abilities” which will do the following:

■ allow identical or equivalent computers to be bought from many vendors, a vendor-inde­pendent supply.

■ allow computers to interact with each other at minimal cost, interoperability.

■ allow applications to be moved easily form one type of computer to another, applications portability.

■ survive generations of computer products in order to take on some of the financial attributes of strategic investment alternatives like real es­tate, stability.

These are the four qualities that mark out open systems from traditional proprietary systems. Simply defined then, open systems means the ability to buy equivalent products from many vendors, that different computers will be able to talk to each other in the same way, that the same application can be run on different computers regardless of label or size, and that the same application can outlive this generation of com­puters, the next generation and the next, and so on until the application becomes obsolete.

“Same is better” because it offers minimum investment, maximum flexibility and the eco­nomic equivalent of application immortality. The four abilities unique to open systems are based upon the premise that “same is better”. The industry is built on the premise that “differ­ent is better”.

To reconstruct the industry, we need a new model.2. P=S+IAll high technology products are composed of two parts. One part that is no longer changing and another part that is still changing to meet emerging market needs. Products (P) therefore, are a simple combination of stability (S) and innovation (I) or: Product = Stability + Innova­tion.

When products are first introduced, the stable content tends to be virtually zero, the innovative content virtually 100 per cent.

As the product matures, it becomes more sta­ble, less and less innovative. A product that ap­proaches 100 per cent stability, and therefore almost no innovation, is usually at or near obso­lescence.

In the first forty years of the development of the high technology industry “different was good and the same was bad”. The vendors tended to

Products (P) are a simple combination of stability (S) and innovation (I) or: Product = Stability + Innovation.

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 13

Opening Movescontinually reinvest in innovative new product features that would increase market share and revenue. Thus innovation was maximised. So for forty years, the suppliers’ equation was: P = S (minimum) + I (maximum). Now, however, the market has reversed to a new demand equation: P = S (maximum) + I (minimum). S, the stabil­ity component, is guaranteed by international, formally agreed standards. Not only must the vendor minimize innovation and maximize sta­bility, the vendor must turn over control of sta­bility to a vendor independent third party.

In fact, vendors have been evolving slowly in this direction since 1972, when the first commer­cial Unix systems became available. Today, open systems are a twenty billion dollar per year busi­ness (forty billion dollars including related soft­ware and services) growing at thirty per cent per year. The sale of proprietary systems is declining.

But for open systems to turn computing back into an engine of business, much more must be done. The vendor and standards communities are working now to reinvent the industry. In the next article, I will discuss how the same is now better than different, and why stability will be at a maximum in the next decade.

Peter Janecek, X/Open Connectivity Strategy manager, claims that the new CoMiX Guide from X/Open will be of high value to anyone interested in coexistence with and migration to OSI.

Universal networking: Getting there

by Peter Janecek

EVERY business enterprise of a reasonable size has not one but several computer net­works. The protocols used for communica­tion vary depending on the type of comput­

ers participating, due both to vendors’ attempts to monopolise this market with their proprietary solutions and to the never-ending striving for high efficiency which has lead to further diversi­fication of networking protocols.

In order to retnedy the fragmentation of com­puter communications caused by the use of a variety of proprietary protocols, the Internation­al Organisation for Standardisation has for twen­ty years been working on the set of services and protocols known as Open System Interconnect, or OSI for short. Through them, the Holy Grail of connectivity of disparate systems would be achieved.

No wonder then that since the first publication in 1988 of the OSI protocols, many governments and private organisations have started requiring all newly installed networks to use them. Because of the widespread acceptance of this networking standard in principle, many people believe that OSI will eventually dominate and perhaps even replace other networks. Whatever the share of the market that the OSI networks capture at any time, organisations naturally face the problem of how to preserve the significant investment in existing networks through some arrangement for their coexistence with OSI, and the task of de­signing strategies for migration of their users, software and entire networks from various proto­col suites to OSI.

X/Open, an international consortium of the world’s largest computer vendors, and working to develop the open systems market, is particu­

larly interested in what will be happening with networks that currently run the Internet Protocol Suite (IPS, popularly known as “TCP/IP”) since this is a defacto standard in the world of Unix from which the open systems movement started.

IPS is often seen as vendor-independent and likely to be supported by many different vendors. X/Open is therefore publishing this northern hemisphere autumn (October), its “Guide to IPS-OSI Coexistence and Migration”, otherwise known as CoMiX.

CoMiX starts with the statement of the prob­lem as consumers of networking experience it. Several scenarios are described which are deemed to be typical and which are based on existing environments from real companies (whose identities, however, are not revealed). Each scenario illustrates a particular aspect of current usage of IPS.

For instance, one scenario shows simple use of IPS in a very basic Unix network environment and as such is fundamental to the whole migra­tion process. In another one, IPS is used to trans­fer files among diverse systems, in other words as a common language in a network dominated by proprietary protocols. Yet another scenario de­picts the engineering workstation environment characterised by distributed processing and small domains with local administrative control.

Perhaps the most significant scenario describes an organisation which has decided to expand its networking infrastructure from a small number of Unix systems with minimal IPS interworking to a much larger network based on OSI. Network performance issues are very important here and many public or large private sector organisations will certainly recognise their own requirements on network parameters like transmission delay and availability.

The last scenario describes a hierarchically structured network with heavy requirements on interoperation between systems. The main prob­lems here arise from the need to manage the migration and to clearly demonstrate the benefits of OSI.

While there are technical issues, many subjec­tive worries and prejudices expressed by a num­ber of people in the different organisations whom X/Open have spoken to are covered. Before a decision is taken by a company network architec­ture group and their management about coexis­tence and particularly about potential migration, it is essential to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both protocol suites in question.

This is why the natural first task for the Co­MiX guide is to compare functionality provided by both protocol suites. It does this by summaris­ing the functionality of each stack (using refer­ence model) and then comparing the services provided at each layer. For IPS, CoMiX refers to the recently published X/Open Guide to IPS (XO/GUIDE/91/OlO) which identifies what most of today’s commercially available IPS im­plementations can do.

In doing so, it almost unintentionally defines a profile of IPS which can be used by procurers, integrators and software developers in order to achieve high interoperability of IPS systems from the day of purchase.

Each user organisation needs to define its own policy on migration determining whom and what to migrate in which order and when, and also the extent of interoperation between IPS and OSI

14 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

during migration. CoMiX identifies the factors to be considered when such a policy is devel­oped. Among them is the cost/benefit ratio, ef­fects on users like retraining, new or changed documentation, and adverse impact on the levels of service.

It also discusses the problem of networking applications. Basically, there are two possible ac­tions: either the current user interface to these applications can be preserved to ease the migra­tion for end-users, or end-users can be retrained to use the new OSI application which eliminates the necessity to port the current interface on top of the new application. Clearly, the most impor­tant applications which are candidates for early migration are electronic mail and file transfer.

Finally, one has to consider what impact mi­gration to OSI will have on network components and devices. Network components like cabling, media access units, bridges, routers and terminal servers together with LAN gateways form a net­work’s infrastructure which gets affected by mi­gration. CoMiX provides technical advice on how to coexist and migrate by proposing the use of seven techniques which are available for coex­istence and migration: dual-protocol stack, uni­versal applications, common application pro­gramming interface, application gateway, hybrid stacks, network service tunnel and transport re­lay.

Building on the description of these tech­niques, about a dozen specific software tools are described which are needed to implement the proposed techniques. The relationship between techniques and tools is not one-to-one: A particu­lar technique may require a combination of tools, while a particular tool may be applicable to a number of techniques. CoMiX gives the func­tional and operational requirements on these tools. Networking software vendors will certainly be soon selling such tools in form of software packages.

CoMiX’s high point comes in the last chapter where the policies and tools described in the previous chapters get applied to the specific sce­narios mentioned above. This presents a real “sanity-check” intended to make sure that the advice provided in CoMiX is meaningful and applicable to real-life problems. For each scenar­io, relevant policies are proposed. It is shown that these policies may be of basic or advanced type, on corporate or departmental level. Each policy is then accompanied by a checklist enu­merating which hardware and software is needed to implement this policy, what costs are associat­ed with it and what skills are needed to imple­ment it.

CoMiX is not a list of recipes guaranteeing success to anyone who is facing the problem of coexistence and migration from IPS to OSI. It is a guide which brings together under one cover many technical and policy aspects which must be considered.

It is the most comprehensive attempt yet by the industry to put a field handbook on this subject into the hands of those involved in all aspects of implementing OSI systems and net­works in the real world: Network component developers, application developers, system inte­grators, procurement individuals and organisa­tions, migrators and other network specialists, and end-user representatives.

Opening Moves

ETHERNET SEGMENT

BACKBONE ETHERNET

ETHERNET SEGMENT

BRIDGE

BRIDGE BRIDGE

BRIDGE

LATTERMINALSERVER

TELNETTERMINALSERVER

SERVER

UNIXWORKSTATION

Number of Ethernet Segments = 100

Total Number of Devices -2500

Devices per segment « 20-50

Scenario 1 Basic IPS Network

typical IPS network to be migrated to OSL.

Preparing the caseMCLEAN, VA. 9 September 1991 — The Busi­ness Case Working Group of the User Alliance for Open Systems met in Rochester, New York, on 20 August 1991, at the Eastman Kodak Com­pany. The working group, led by Charles Gard­ner, director of Information Technology of Pho­tographies Products Group of Kodak, includes representatives from 20 companies such as East­man Kodak, Hughes Aircraft, Boeing Computer Services, Monsanto, Emerging Technologies, United Technologies, NASA, US Sprint and DEC.

In spite of the hurricane, the group met to progress their work on a tool kit for helping users justify open systems technology.

The tool kit will include a repository of case studies on justifying open systems, checklists of business case “qualifiers and quantifiers,” con­cept and vision papers, models for developing a business case and white papers directed at specif­ic business issues.

The white papers, for instance, will address approaches to removing obstacles to open sys­tems or discuss specific issues in making a busi­ness case. The kit will be available to any user of open systems technology.

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 15

COMPUTING SERVICES

MEMORY EXPANSION_________________ PRICES as AT SEPTEMBER 1, 1991

SIMM ft SIP256Kx9 80ns $20.001MBx9 100ns $56.001 MBx9 80ns $60.004MBx9 80ns $265.001MBx8 100ns $50.001MBx8DRAM

80ns $58.00

1MBx4 (STATIC) $36.001MBx1 100ns $6.101 MBx1 80ns $6.15414256 100ns $6.1041256 80ns $6,1541256 100ns $1.9041256 80ns $2.0041464 80ns $2.754164 100ns $2.35

CO-PROCESSORSRECOMMENDATIONS8087-1 INTEL $130.0080287-12 AMD $100.0080287-20 INTEL $150.0080387SX20 IT or CYRIX $185.0080387IX33 NT or CYRIX $300.0080287XLT INTEL $160.00

TOSHIBA LAPTOPT1000SE SE 2Mb $290.00T1800 2Mb $190.00T3100E 2Mb $190.00T3100SX 2Mb $190.00T3200 3Mb $250.00T5100 2Mb $190.00T5200 2Mb $190.00

EXPANSION CARDSLCS 866IN (AT) EMS 512-32MB (SIMMS)OK $240.00BOCARAM AT PLUS OK to 8MB $250.00BOCARAM ATOK to 2MB $170.00BOCARAM XTOK to 2Mb $145.00($54 per MB)

COMPAQ

Sales Tax 20%. Overnight delivery. Credit cards welcome1st Floor, 100 Yarrara Road, RO. Box 382 Pennant Hills 2120 PELHAM Tel (02) 980 6988 Fax (02) 980 6991

386-20, 386-25, 386-20S 386-S, 386-334MB MODULES $380.004MB BOARDS $420.00

REVELATOR BUSINESS SOFTWARE I OPEN SYSTEMSTHE SOFTWARE SYSTEM OF THE FUTURE

Developed in “ADVANCED REVELATION” as a Fully Integrated System for the Single or Multi-User Networked Environment comprises:

★ ACCOUNTS PAYABLE (Creditors) * ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE (Debtors)* ORDER ENTRY * PURCHASING * ASSETS LEDGER * GENERAL LEDGER

★ JOB CONTROL * STOCK & INVENTORY

For further details or to arrange a Demonstration contact:DAVID HAMPTON at:

DHA BUSINESS SOLUTIONS(Division of Davane & Co Pty Ltd)

Postal address: PO BOX 12 SYLVANIA SOUTHGATE NSW 2224 409 King Georges Road BEVERLY HILLS NSW AUSTRALIA 2209

PH (02) 570 9244 FAX (02) 579 3275DEALER ENQUIRIES WELCOMED

HARDWAREBUY, SELL, RENT,

ALL BRANDS. “COMPUTERS ARE

CHEAPER THE SECOND TIME AROUND’’

CALL US NOW (02) 949 7144m§ COMPUTER RESELLERSit*?, s////. INTERNATIONAL

Unit 25, Balgowlah Business Pali, 28 Fosebeny Street, Balgcwiah NSW 2093 FAX (02) 9494419

Macpherson Open Systems — Open Systems Specialists Unix, Pick, Project Development

Expertise available inProgress and System BuilderSydney (02) 416 2788 Melbourne (03) 866 1177Greg MacPherson Ashley Isserow

Brisbane (07) 8708262Stephen Tucker

PROFESSIONAL

COMPUTINGTHE MAGAZINE OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMPUTER SOCIETY

ADVERTISINGENQUIRIES

Phone Peter Dwyer

(03) 520 5555

Advertising conditionsAdvertising accepted for publication in Professional Com­puting is subject to the conditions set out in their rate cards, and the rules applicable to advertising laid down from time by the Media Council of Australia. Every adver­tisement is subject to the publisher’s approval. No respon­sibility is taken for any loss due to the failure of an adver­tisement to appear according to instructions.Ttie positioning or placing of an advertisement within the accepted classifications is at the discretion of Professional Computing except where specially instructed and agreed upon by the publisher.Rates are based on the understanding that the monetary level ordered is used within the period of the order. Maxi­mum period of any order is one year. Should an advertiser

fail to use the total monetary level ordered, the rate will be amended to coincide with the amount of space used. The word “advertisement” will be used on copy which in the opinion of the publisher, resembles editorial matter.The above information is subject to change, without notifi­cation, at the discretion of the publisher.

Warranty andindemnity

ADVERTISERS and/or advertising agencies upon and by lodging material with the publisher for publication or auth­

orising or approving of the publication of any material, INDEMNIFY the publisher, its servants and agents against all liability claims or proceedings whatsoever arising from the publication, and without limiting the generality of the foregoing to indemnify each of them in relation to defama­tion, slander df title, breach of copyright, infringement of trademarks or names of publication titles, unfair competi­tion or trade practices, royalties or violation of rights or privacy AND WARRANT that the material complies with all relevant laws and regulations and that its publication will not give rise to any rights against or liabilities in the pub­lisher, its servants or agents and, in particular, that nothing therein is capable of being misleading or deceptive or otherwise in breach of Part V of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

Bookings - Tel: (03) 520 5555, Fax: (03) 521 3647

16 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

Asson VI Kl) INI KCiK \ I Kl> \1 \IMKWIICOMPUIERS P l

NEW OR REMARKETED SYSTEMS & PERIPHERALS

BUYINGSELLINGLEASING

INTRODUCES

PROSPERMARKETINGSOFTWARE

ST-860 2-3GB TAPE STORAGE FOR ULTIMATE

SYSTEMS

forDATABASE MARKETING

DIRECT MAIL TELEMARKETING

CUSTOMER SURVEYS CUSTOMER PROFILING

AND MUCH, MUCH MORE

ALL SYSTEMS AND UPGRADES

SUPPLIERS OF PICK HARDWARE

ANDSOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

NEW AND RE-MARKETED

AUTHORISED BULL DEALER

ACCESSING A WORLDWIDE DEALER NETWORK CALL US NOW FOR YOUR SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Level 8, 35 Spring Street, Bondi Junction, NSW 2022 Australia PO Box 884 Bondi Junction NSW 2022 Australia

Telephone: (+61 02) 359 9220 Facsimile: (+61 02) 387 1589

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 17

Opening Moves

ANDF addresses one of the industry’s oldest problems; application portability on multiple hardware architectures.

OSF ends ANDF search

THE Open Software Foundation the TDF technology from the Electronics Division of the Defence Research Agency of the UK, formerly Royal Signals and Radar Estab­

lishment, for the core technology of its Architec­ture-Neutral Distribution Format (ANDF).

ANDF is a compiler intermediate language technology that enables developers to develop and distribute their applications in a format that can be installed and run on diverse open systems architecture. With this technology, OSF is deliv­ering the first hardware-independent software distribution format, providing a consistent de­velopment and distribution environment for multiple platforms.

OSF issued this request for technology (RFT) in April, 1989, to explore possible solutions to the problem of efficiently developing and distrib­uting software independent of the target hard­ware architecture. The search generated 15 quali­fying technologies. The process also involved a prototype phase to accelerate the further devel­opment of the four most promising technologies. Concurrent research was conducted to determine the commercial feasibility of this new technology area.

By providing a hardware-independent software distribution format, ANDF facilitates the cre­ation of highly portable, high performance appli­cations for the open systems marketplace.

“ANDF addresses one of the industry’s oldest problems; application portability on multiple hardware architectures,” said Pat Riemitis, OSF business area manager. “ANDF will help drive the growth of the open systems market and pro­vide software developers with a cost-effective means to develop and distribute their applica­tions for a wide variety of architectures.”

TDF a compiler intermediate language from the Electronics Division of the Defence Research Agency, was designed from the outset to meet a set of requirements similar to the requirements

of the ANDF RFT. TDF the result of a five-year research program, supports ANSI C, and has been designed to support a wide range of pro­gramming languages, such as C++, Cobol and Fortran. The TDF technology not only met all of the ANDFs RFT requirements, but also exceed­ed them in a number of areas.

Today, users must purchase and install a dif­ferent version of each application for each com­puter architecture they own. With ANDF devel­opers can package one version of an application and its required environment and be confident that it can be installed and run on all platforms supporting ANDF The proliferation of ANDF will allow applications and hardware architec­tures to evolve independently of each other, thus making it possible to integrate a wide variety of hardware and software to best meet end user needs.

With ANDF users will benefit from a greater return on investments in software and systems due to the increased longevity of software; a greater choice of applications; easier distribution of in-house developed applications to multi-ven­dor environments; and the ability to standardise on applications across architecture to help reduce training and support costs.

The initial release of the ANDF core technol­ogy will support ANSI C, Posix, and XPG3. It will consist of a specification, an ANSI C Pro­ducer, three reference installers — for the Vax architecture running Ultrix; Intel 80386 architec­ture running SCO Open Desktop; and the MIPS architecture running Ultrix — and supporting development tools.

The first snapshot will be available in the third quarter of this year. This snapshot will enable vendors to review and evaluate the technology. 880pen, IBM, Siemens-Nixdorf Information Systems, and Bull have already agreed up to take part in this snapshot program.

The Open Software Foundation is a not-for- profit research and development organisation de­veloping and delivering an open software envi­ronment based on standards for the benefit of the information processing industry. OSF uses an innovative open process, soliciting technologies from the industry-at-large, and delivering the technology in source code form.

M The University Of Queensland

ITTE

Information Technology for Training and Education

The second international Information Technology for Training and Education Conference (ITTE 92) will be held in Brisbane from 29 September - 2 October 1992. The conference is keyed towards cost effective and efficient training and education, as well as looking to the future and the possibilities it holds.

EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST IN PRESENTING AT OR ATTENDING ITTE 92 SHOULD BE REGISTERED BY

17 JANUARY 1992Key Topics Multimedia

SimulationTechnologiesPerformanceSupport SystemsComputer-BasedTraining

Authoring tools; present, achievable technologies; advanced design techniques Using models to emulate work experiences

Concept and development issues

Test driving systems: design aspects; quality assurance; evaluation; working smarter

ITTE 92 Conference Manager Continuing Professional Education The University of Queensland Qld 4072 Ph: (07) 365-7100Fax: (07) 365-7099

18 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

ACS IN VIEW

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE:

From Alan UnderwoodAustralian Computer CompetitionMANY ACS members are probably unaware that since 1989 the Australian Computer Society has sponsored a three-person team in a student pro­gramming competition held in conjunction with the South East Asian Regional Computer Con­federation’s (SEARCC) annual conference.

Australian teams have distinguished them­selves as ambassadors for our country and have performed extremely well with our team finish­ing a creditable third in Manila last year.

Credit for the selection of the team is due entirely to the excellent work of the University College of Southern Queensland in conducting the Australian Computer Competition. 1991 marks the tenth year the competition has been held and the third year the competition has been offered Australia wide.

The ACS owes a debt of gratitude to the com­petition’s co-ordinating committee, and in par­ticular to Mr David Roberts, for their co-opera­tion and contributions in selecting the ACS team.

I will certainly be looking to see a large Austra­lian contingent in Bali as will IPKIN, the Indo­nesian Computer Society.

IFIPCongratulations are in order for Ashley Golds­worthy who was elected to the position of vice- president at the recent IFIP General Assembly held in Harare, Zimbabwe. The meeting also took the decision to award the 1996 World con­gress to Canberra in the face of an extremely competitive bid from Europe. IFIP also appoint­ed Ashley Goldsworthy as the Organising Com­mittee Chairman for the Congress.

ComTap’91Data Communications specialists should be aware that the 3rd ACS/IFIP Joint International Symposium on Data Communications Technol­ogy and Practice will be held in Sydney at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre from No­vember 18-20, 1991. Previous events in 1976 and 1981 were outstanding and in fact were oversub­scribed so early bookings are recommended.

PCPThis year the competition will be held in Ja­

karta on November 28-29 and it is intended to send a senior team and a junior team to represent Australia. Unfortunately our past sponsor, Qan- tas, has withdrawn its sponsorship this year. We have approached Garuda Airlines to ascertain its interest in providing the necessary sponsored air­fares.

Members should note that the 1991 SEARCC conference will be held in Bali between Decem­ber 4-6 at the Bali Hilton at Nusa Dua. Members intending to attend the conference are advised to book their air tickets as a matter of urgency because this apparently is a peak holiday period.

The national introduction of the Practising Com­puter Professional scheme has proven a major success for members illustrated by their support as well as heightening the consciousness of em­ployers for the need to facilitate ongoing profes­sional training for IT staff. I am currently sitting on 27 PCP hours and am very conscious of the many members who have already achieved their PCP status. I look forward to joining them in the near future and invite all members to participate in a scheme which I believe is essential to justify our claim as professionals.

ALAN UNDERWOOD MACS

The Australian Computer Society

Office bearersPresident: Alan Underwood. Vice-presidents: Garry Trlnder, Geoff Dober. Immediate past president: John Goddard. National treasurer: Glen Heinrich. Chief executive officer: Ashley Goldsworthy.PO Box 319, Darllnghurst NSW 2010. Telephone (02) 2115855.Fax (02)281 1208.

H Peter Isaacson Publications

(Incorporated in Victoria)

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTINGEditor: Tony Blackmore. Editor-ln-chief: Peter Isaacson. Advertising coordinator: Linda Kavan. Subscriptions: Jo Anne Birtles. Director of the Publications Board: John Hughes.

Subscriptions, orders, editorial, correspondenceProfessional Computing, 45-50 Porter St, Prahran, Victoria, 3181. Telephone (03)520 5555. Telex 30880. Fax (03)510 3489.

AdvertisingNational sales manager: Peter Dwyer.Professional Computing, an official publication of the Australian Computer Society Incorporated, is published by ACS/PI Publications, 45-50 Porter Street, Prahran, Victoria, 3181.

Opinions expressed by authors in Professional Computing are not necessarily those of the ACS or Peter Isaacson Publications.

While every care will be taken, the publishers cannot accept responsibility for articles and photographs submitted for publication.

The annual subscription is $50.

PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991 19

ACS IN VIEW

The conscience of the international IT community?

DURING the last few months, Profes­sional Computing has carried re­ports on a variety of the specialist Technical Committees (TCs) of the

International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) of which the ACS is an active and important member. This report relates to TC9, which has the pompous title “The Relationship Between Comput­ers and Society”.

The Committee comprises representa­tives of each member country, and about 25 maintain regular contact. Its aims are broad, and relate to such matters as ana­lysing and communicating the social con­sequences of IT and its applications, pro­moting greater responsibility by practitioners for the impact of their work, and encouraging the humanisation of in­formation systems.

Periodically, TC9 holds a major interna­tional conference on “Human Choice and Computers”, most recently in Dublin in June 1990. TC9 was a sponsor of the SOST Conferences held in Terrigal in May 1989, and in Adelaide as part of the MO­SAIC of conferences in October 1991. This Conference’s theme of “Managing Infor­mation Technology’s Organisational Im­pact” is also close to the interests of TC8 (Information Systems) — see Bemie Glas- son’s article in Professional Computing of June 1991.

Another area in which TC9 has been directly active is Ethics, and a draft docu­ment is circulating which seeks to provide guidelines whereby the professional body in each member-country can assess and further develop its own Code of ethics. In addition, it has been successful in having “Diminishing the Vulnerability of the In­formation Society” included as a stream in the World Congress in Madrid in Septem­ber 1992.

The majority of TC9s activities are managed by the Working Groups, whose members act in a private capacity, rather than as representatives of a country.WG 9.1 Computers and work

This group of some 40 members, includ­ing one Australian, has held a string of conferences on aspects of IT and the work­place. The most recent was held in August in Tampere, Finland under the title of “Human Jobs and Computer Interfaces”. Participation tends to be dominated by Europeans, and the group is somewhat so­cialist in its ideology. That makes for some lively and valuable debate.WG 9.2 Social accountability

Although only comprising 30 members (of whom three are Australian), this is a

lively group, typically meeting twice each year, and running an additional two events. This is the one of the few avenues whereby observers of computing can min­gle with practitioners, and significant dif­ferences of viewpoint are very apparent. The most recent activities were Work­shops on “Social Vulnerability” in Namur (Belgium) in January 1991 and “Social Citizenship in the Information Age” in Brighton in August of this year.WG 9.3 Home-oriented informatics and telematics

This group of 25 members is new and does not yet have any Australian mem­bers. It held one conference two years ago, and is planning another shortly. Because it operates at the level of IT consumers, it has so far found it difficult to attract cor­porate sponsorship for its events.WG 9.4 Social implications of com­puters in developing countries

This small, specialised group held its first meeting in New Delhi two years ago, and is planning another in Kuala Lumpur. It provides a forum for discussion of na­tional policies in relation to computerisa­tion and computer literacy, adaptation of technology to particular cultures, the role of trans-national corporations, regional and international cooperation, and tech­nology transfer.WG 9.5 Social implications of artifi­cial intelligence systems

This recently formed, specialised group of 15 has held one conference in Tel Aviv on the implications of robotics, and is planning another in Budapest in 1993, in the areas of control engineering, command systems and risk assessment and management.

There are further developments afoot. A small, Scandinavian-led task group on “Women, Work and Computerisation” has been active for some years, and recent­ly held its fourth biennial workshop. An­other is the esoterically named “Cultural Identity and Informatics” task group (which is at least a little clearer than the originally suggested name of ‘Ecological Informatics’ — you need a degree in French philosophy to follow that particu­lar proposal). Another, which appears like­ly to evolve fairly quickly into a fully fledged Working Group, is a “Computer Security Law” task group.

As will be apparent from the titles of the groups and conferences, TC9 is not con­cerned with the technical aspects of IT, but with its impact. As the power of IT in­creases, the importance of informed de­

ROGER CLARKE has been Australian representative to IFIP TC9 since 1985, when he took the position over from Ashley Goldsworthy together with the Chairmanship of the Economic, Legal and Social Implications Committee (ACS ELSIC). Since 1989 he has also been Director of the Society’s Commu­nity Affairs Board.

Prior to taking up his present job as Reader in Information Systems at the Australian National University, Roger spent 17 years in professional, manage­rial and consulting positions in the In­formation Technology industry in Syd­ney, London and Zurich.

His interests are in application soft­ware technology and its impact and management; organisational, economic and legal aspects of information tech­nology; and information privacy and data surveillance. He is particularly concerned that IT professionals not treat the implications of their work as someone else’s problem, but rather consider the applications and implica­tions of IT at the same time.

bate, and of responsible professionalism, increases even more quickly. As with other TCs and Working Groups, the internation­al dimension is vital. TC9s last two Chairs have been from the USA and Germany (West); WG 9.1’s from Germany (West) and Germany (East); WG 9.2’s from the UK and Belgium; and the foundation Chairs of the other three Groups are from the Netherlands, India and Israel. In all, members of WGs come from some 30 dif­ferent countries.

Further information is available from Roger Clarke, Department of Commerce, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2600, tel (06) 249 3666, fax (06) 249 5005, email: clarcomm@fac.anu.e- du.au.

20 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, OCTOBER 1991

The Boss we all need!

fiti'i*i t i i

"When you spend as much time as I do developing software applications, you’ve got to have the right software - and I’ve found it!’’

DataBoss 3.5 is a truly relational database generator from Kedwell Software.

"It has one of the most powerful report generators I've ever seen.

"I simply paint any reports I need with the new WYSIWYG report generator.

"It generates "C" or Pascal source code which allows unlimited flexibility.

"DataBoss 3.5 saves any programmer valuable time because it operates a full systems development life-cycle.

"There's no run-time licence fees and no programming is required.

"Kedwell Software offers full technical support and provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use manual. They really make it simple."

If you want more information on DataBoss 3.5, please mail this coupon to the address below.

Name:_______________________Company:___________________Address:_____________________

KEDWELLSOFTWARE P/L.

A.C.N. 010 752 799 P.O. Box 122, Brisbane Market Queensland Australia 4106 Telephone 61-7-379 4551 Facsimile 61-7-379 9422

And inthe red corner,

NCR’s new System 3000.

WPhKk

Packed with awesome power, the System 3000 delivers leading edge technology at knockout speed.

With four times the power of the largest conventional mainframes at 1/1 Oth of the cost, NCR’s 3600 heads the range of scalable processors currently released for sale.

Our 3320, 3340, 3345, 3445 and 3550 systems also offer you the flexibility of industry standard, compatible technology. All backed by the service and support of one of the world’s leading computer companies.

With NCR in your corner, it’s no contest.

For further information contact Jack Snowsill on (02) 964 8296.

Nicire

Open, Cooperative Computing. The Strategy For Managing Change.