------------------------------------------------------------ UniNews The Biweekly Newsletter For UniForum Members ------------------------------------------------------------ Issue Date: August 03, 1994 Volume VIII, Number 12 ------------------------------------------------------------ UniNews is written and published by UniForum's publications department. For information on articles in this issue or to contribute news to future issues, contact Don Dugdale at don@uniforum.org or (408) 986-8840, ext. 29, or (800) 255-5620 ext. 29. Copyright 1994 by UniForum. All rights reserved. UNIX is a registered trademark, licensed exclusively by X/Open Co., Ltd. UniForum is a trademark of UniForum. Printed in USA. UniNews (ISSN 1069-0395) is published biweekly for $12 per year (membership dues) by UniForum, 2901 Tasman Dr., Suite 205, Santa Clara, CA 95054. Except for individual use by member subscribers, no portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of UniForum. UniNews is presented in ASCII format. It is also available in PostScript by accessing the UniForum World Wide Web Server. Point your WWW client to http://www.uniforum.org. ------------------------------------------------------------ Table of Contents: o Portable Operating Systems Rank First Among IT Needs o Tilson Selected To Head UniForum o Randall Howard: New UniForum Director o Looking for a Few Good Writers o Whatever Happened to ANDF? OSF Says It's Alive o Affiliate News o For Cold Summer Nights... o UniNews Recruitment and Positions Wanted o UniForum Member Benefits ------------------------------------------------------------ Portable Operating Systems Rank First Among IT Needs ----------------------------------------------------- X/Open user survey shows applications, security close runners-up Users rank portable operating systems, client/server applications, and system and network security their three top priorities in supporting business functions, according to preliminary results of an annual open systems user survey taken by X/Open Co. X/Open's Xtra 1994 World Survey was conducted in 41 nations and eight languages. The survey received replies from 889 respondents, each representing a company or major division of a company that buys information technology. The survey participants were contacted through 90 IT user groups such as the Amdahl User Group Europe, the Cray User Group, and the Computer Society of South Africa. X/Open conducts the survey to obtain information for its technical programs but also makes the results available to the public. A report on this year's survey will be available in September. Full results will be presented at the X/Open Xtra World Congress in Washington, D.C., Sept. 12-15. Here is what the preliminary results show: o Portable operating systems are considered "of utmost importance" by 81 percent of respondents. Other technologies considered of equal importance are client/server applications, 78 percent; system and network security, 77 percent; integrated network management tools, 70 percent; and integrated system management tools, 66 percent. o Top technologies that will see large gains over the next three years are integrated system management tools, database management tools and integrated network management tools. While 29 percent said they now use integrated system management tools, an additional 44 percent said they would begin to use them by 1997. Only 14 percent said they now use database management tools but an additional 44 percent said they would be using them by 1997. For integrated network management tools, the figures were 38 percent now and an additional 41 percent by 1997. Distributed databases ranked next with 30 percent now, and an additional 39 percent three years from now. o Figures for budget planning show that 79 percent of those responding expect their client/server applications budget to increase in the next three years while none expect a decrease in that budget. For their servers expenditures, 76 percent are planning a higher budget by 1997 while only 1 percent expect a decline. Network spending will increase in 75 percent of the companies, but will decrease in only 1 percent. The budget for mainframes, however, is expected to increase for only 6 percent, but 42 percent said that the mainframes budget would decrease. o In the recruitment area, experience with open systems was considered the top-priority skill that the companies look for in hiring IT staff members. Twenty-two percent ranked that factor "of utmost importance" and 38 percent considered it "very important." Communications skills was ranked next with 21 percent calling it "of utmost importance" and 47 percent "very important." Customer service skills ranked third and knowledge of in-house systems ranked fourth, administration and planning fifth, and people management sixth. User group members throughout the world were surveyed but the geographical distribution of the replies was controlled by those willing to complete the survey form, according to an X/Open spokesperson. As a result, 44 percent of the responses came from Europe, 24 percent from industrialized Asia, 18 percent from North America and 14 percent from the rest of the world. Those from Asia in particular "tend to be more willing to respond to surveys of this type." said Jeff Hansen, X/Open's director of marketing communications. The average enterprise revenue of the companies responding is $1.3 billion per year and the average external IT budget is $24 million. Fifty percent of the companies employ more than 1,000 persons. Twenty-four percent of those responding were senior executives, 43 percent were IT managers and 18 percent were IT technical support people. For more information readers can call X/Open at (415) 323-7992. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Tilson Selected To Head UniForum --------------------------------- Four elected to two-year terms on board of directors The UniForum Association has new officers, two newly elected members of the board of directors, and two re-elected board members following the June membership election and the first meeting of the new board in July. Michael Tilson, senior vice president of services for The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), was chosen by a unanimous vote of the board to succeed Dr. James Bell as president of UniForum. Dr. Bell, director of corporate alliances for Hewlett-Packard, decided to step down after two years as president. He remains on the board. Marie Burch, vice president of the Winta Group, was chosen by the board as executive vice president of UniForum for the coming year, succeeding Tilson in that position. Steve Zalewski, director of UNIX marketing for Oracle, was re-elected vice president of marketing of UniForum, and Randall Howard, president of Mortice Kern Systems, and a newly elected board member, as well as appointed by Tilson as UniForum's chief financial officer, succeeding Burch. Howard and Jeanne Baccash, assistant vice president of enterprise network and system management with AT&T Global Information Solutions, were elected to the board in the June election, along with Bell and Roel Pieper, president and CEO of UB Networks, who were re-elected. All will serve two-year terms. Bell has served on the board since 1988 and Pieper since 1992. Baccash, Bell, Howard, and Pieper were elected from a slate of 10 candidates. Tilson, 42, was elected to the board in 1991 and re-elected in 1993. "I think there are opportunities to build on what we do well and on our revitalized base of activities, such as the annual conference and trade show," Tilson said. "I want to use that as a springboard to re-launch UniForum as an organization with even larger impact on the open systems industry." Tilson added, "There are great opportunities for UniForum in that we're evolving from a focus on only UNIX-based open systems to include additional open systems involving the Internet, the World-Wide Web and similar open technologies. It's an exciting time to assume the leadership of an exciting organization." End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Randall Howard: New UniForum Director -------------------------------------- Software company's president started as researcher, became entrepreneur Randall Howard well remembers the first time he succeeded in getting a number of computers to work with each other in his university computer lab in the early 1970s. It was a high that stayed with him and helped propel him into his career in open systems. "I built up some systems that allowed things like printer sharing and job sharing," Howard says. "Some of the things that were extremely thrilling back then seem commonplace now." Howard, the 40-year-old president of Mortice Kern Systems in Waterloo, Ontario, followed an early interest in mathematics into computer science classes as a student at the University of Waterloo. "I never really looked back," he says. "What attracted me was that this is an industry based purely on knowledge. It was based on people and their thinking and their ideas. It was a world created wholly by the minds of human beings." A Lifelong Interest Three events in Howard's undergraduate life moved him toward open systems by solidifying his interest in UNIX. The first was his introduction to the operating system in 1973. One of the UNIX insiders from Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, Steve Johnson, came to the university for a sabbatical. "He brought himself, but he also brought a lot of concepts with him and without that, UNIX would probably have been five or six years later coming to the university," Howard says. In those days, obtaining a copy of UNIX was a more personal procedure. And that event had a strong impact on the young computer science student. "It wasn't distributed as a commercial product," Howard remembers. "Ken Thompson [the co-developer of UNIX] would go down and cut a tape for you. Seeing the early UNIX was a major milestone in my life. I was really struck by how powerful a system it was and yet how simple it was. Even as UNIX has grown up and matured, that philosophy has remained." Howard also gives credit to the university's policy of giving students computer access time, for sustaining his enthusiasm. "I was at a university where there was a tremendous amount of hands-on experience given to students with computers," he says. "Nowadays it's not such a big deal, but back then it was a critical element in turning out a generation of people who became the leaders of the industry of today." A third event that cemented Howard's interest in UNIX was a decision at the university to use UNIX as the base for a distributed medical database project he was working on. "I was the lucky recipient of the benefit of working with this experimental system in the early days," he remembers. "[The product] never reached the commercial light of day but it was an interesting project." After graduating in 1975, Howard built on his open systems experience in the area of interoperability by joining a University of Waterloo research organization called the Computer Communications Network Group. It was a collaborative effort to do research that generated industrial spin-offs. Learning What Sells Then in 1980, Howard made the decision that eventually led to his future as an entrepreneur. He moved to Chicago and joined a startup, the Mark Williams Co., building a UNIX clone. Joining the commercial world for the first time and living in the United States had its effect. "It was a tremendous opportunity to do exactly the kind of work that I was interested in doing," Howard says. "It was at that company that I really made the transition from being research-oriented and perhaps a little bit ivory towerish and idealistic into someone who really saw the business potential and the entrepreneurial side of the computer industry." Aside from writing operating systems at the startup, he had the chance to work on sales, marketing and business strategy development. While moving to a big U.S. city was his greatest hurdle in taking the new job, it turned out to be an important life experience. "I'm extremely glad that I spent time in the United States, because it enlarged my world view," he says. "There were a lot of bright young Canadians 15 years ago, but they weren't as entrepreneurial as Americans. That has changed. I think Canadians have learned that they have to be extremely entrepreneurial in the world and there's no better place than the United States to learn entrepreneurial business concepts. I came back to Canada with that." The change in Howard had to do with a specific cultural tendency in Canadians, Howard believes. "Canadians are this unique blend of being a little bit like Americans and a little bit European. There's a little bit of the British reserve in the Canadian psyche. At the same time, like everybody else in the world, we've learned to survive. Canada is a pretty small country, economically, and for us to really succeed on the world stage, we have to sell products across the entire world. I think that's a reflection of what's happening in the rest of the world. A single country is too small to be really self-sufficient anymore. And this whole world economy has been created by the computer and technology industry." Howard moved back to Canada in 1984 and helped found Mortice Kern Systems in Waterloo. "I thought there would be some great opportunities there," he says. "I realized that in order to do the kind of work I wanted to do-really interesting, challenging work-it wasn't going to come to me. I was going to have to create it. I found a number of people who were of high quality and said, "Let's sit down and found a company." And that's exactly what we did." Howard served as vice president of research and development until 1989, when he was named president. Bringing in Cash The original plan for MKS was to create and market desktop publishing software-hence the use of the typesetting terms mortice and kern. But that project never came to pass. Instead, the company decided to start bringing in cash by doing a variety of consulting jobs for clients, including the development of a three-dimensional spreadsheet for Imperial Oil, the Canadian subsidiary of Exxon. The consulting brought in the money and the experience to develop MKS's first product. That was MKS Toolkit, a suite of UNIX-compatible development tools for working on DOS or OS/2. "I could see the trend where a lot of software development was going to happen on PCs. At that time, and still to this day, UNIX systems remain ahead in software development tools. To be able to put some of those UNIX development tools down on PCs seemed to me to be a real market need." Today, MKS Toolkit has about 125,000 paid users. "That product gained a good reputation in the developer community and the sales just kept growing," Howard says. "Really, that was the basis for building a sustainable company." He attributes the success of the product partially to the practical experience the company gained while consulting. "Consulting led to ideas to create products that people would really use, and I think that's a lesson that one can never forget," Howard says. "For us as a company, starting out in consulting was a really good way to understand what people were really going to need out there, not just what we thought they would need." MKS Toolkit is still being sold, but the company has since branched out with its InterOpen series of systems-level products and services such as the InterOpen/POSIX Shell and Utilities source code product. More recently, MKS has released Internet access software. Although it was never written down that MKS would dedicate itself to open systems, open systems principles were "in our blood," Howard believes. "I think that those philosophies that were imbedded in UNIX-which really are the roots of today's open systems movement-can never leave you once you have them. MKS makes products that cross boundaries, that put different kinds of cultures together. It marries DOS-which was viewed as the antithesis of open systems, with open systems. So really, MKS has always been very pragmatic in its application of being an open systems company. Basically I think MKS's long-term mission is to continue to work toward being the leading software development tools and open systems vendor in the marketplace." Starting with POSIX Howard's involvement with standards began in 1987, when he started to work seriously in the effort to develop POSIX. After four years in that project, he handed the responsibility to other MKS employees. MKS became a member of the X/Open Independent Software Vendor Council in 1991. Howard chose X/Open for his next standards effort because he felt it was vendor-neutral compared to other consortia, and because he felt it could also employ marketing. "Believe me, this whole open systems standards concept needs a lot of marketing," Howard says. "It's very easy for a simple message to get lost amid both the hype that comes from the Microsoft camp and some of which comes from individual vendors in the open systems area." He also attended working group meetings of the International Standards Organization, where he gained an insight into internationalization issues. As a director of UniForum, Howard is most concerned that open systems organizations such as UniForum and USENIX cooperate in their programs and not duplicate their efforts. "If open systems is going to move to the next level of success, it very much has to focus its efforts-because resources are limited, and in order not to confuse the public. I like to see organizations cooperating with each other because everybody will gain. I think everybody realizes that this is a key factor to the success of the whole open systems industry." The problem of confusing messages from vendors also has to be addressed, Howard says. "Vendors have to learn to cooperate and at the same time to compete. That's challenging because companies by their very nature are competitive right down to the bone. So it's very difficult for companies to see mutual shared interests, and more importantly to fund activities that are based on those mutually shared interests. I feel that from my own history and track record, I'm in a fairly strong position of neutrality when I speak about this. I'm in a kind of third-party, objective position, so maybe I can make a difference. I think that I have a role to play here, but only time will tell how that will actually play out." End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Looking for a Few Good Writers ------------------------------ Are you an open systems professional with expertise in a particular area such as security, procurement, networking, or object technology? Do you focus on specifics while also taking a broader view? Do you have something to say and the desire to get it into print? If so, we'd like to talk with you. UniForum Monthly is the magazine for open systems professionals. We're looking for writers who have a solid grounding in topics pertinent to the open systems industry and the ability to write informed, articulate, opinionated, and sometimes amusing articles. This isn't a call for promotional material or marketing hype. It is an invitation to open systems professionals who would like to use their expertise, keen view of the industry, and strong writing skills to contribute to our features or departments. If you're interested in the possibility of writing for us, send your resume and samples of your writing to: Meg Peterson UniForum 2901 Tasman Dr., #205 Santa Clara, CA 95054 megp@uniforum.org End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Whatever Happened to ANDF? OSF Says It's Alive ----------------------------------------------- The technology that could make UNIX applications portable [Editor's Note: In our May 18 issue, UniNews reported on the Deploy project, an effort to build a framework for UNIX software test tools sponsored by the European commission, X/Open, the Open Software Foundation (OSF) and other organizations. Deploy is based largely on the Architecture Neutral Distribution Format (ANDF) technology developed by the UK's Defense Research Agency. To explore ANDF more deeply and learn about its other applications, UniNews interviewed Steve Johnson, senior technical consultant with the OSF Research Institute.] UniNews: What was the original idea behind ANDF? Johnson: One of its principle functions was to try to find a way to shrink-wrap applications so that you could get the same kind of distribution vehicles in the open systems marketplace that you could for PCs-so you could pick up the software off the shelf and run it on UNIX without having to also qualify that you're running OSF/1 or SVR4 or SunOS or HP-UX or any different version out there. That was its initial objective. UniNews: How did ANDF get started? Johnson: Originally with a request for technology issued by OSF for ANDF in April 1989. There were a number of people who responded to that with a wide range of technologies. There were something like 24 submissions that had come in, none of which claimed to be solutions to the ANDF problem. But they proposed that those could be engineered into solutions to the problem. So unlike some of the other RFTs for OSF, where there was an existing technology that could pretty much be brought to market with some engineering work on it. The ANDF problem was going to require more effort than that. Following an initial round of qualification, a number of the people dropped out for a variety of reasons, so we ended with 15 bona fide submissions. Of those submissions we then selected a short list of four that went into a prototyping stage so that we could actually determine that indeed, the ANDF problem, as we had stated it, was solvable. Out of this prototype stage, we ended up selecting the technology proposed by the DRA, then known as the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, in the UK. Of the four submissions, they all actually demonstrated that there was a potential solution to the ANDF problem as we had stated it. One of the submissions was kind of held together with bailing wire. Two of them had some engineering problems. The DRA technology essentially satisfied the performance requirement, and in addition, it was quite compact in its representation. It met all of the other qualification levels that we had put into our initial set of goals. So that selection was made in June 1991. UniNews: How did you go about developing the technology? Johnson: We went into a program with DRA. We got about a year into that when the program moved into the research institute. That happened principally because of the fact that while this was still a technology that fell into a category that OSF should be working with, it was not clear how ANDF was going to contribute to OSF's bottom line. Lots of people stood to make money from it, but it was not clear that OSF was one of them. So it went through a transition from being part of the commercial offerings into being a research project, and that's where we've been for the last couple of years. UniNews: Has there been a problem spreading the use of ANDF? Johnson: What's happened in the meantime is that there was a period of time when there were some commercial companies who were looking into utilizing ANDF. One of them was USL. We had an active contract with them because they were looking to have SVR4 run on a variety of different platforms and ANDF seemed like a suitable vehicle. That program was ongoing until USL was bought by Novell. Novell is very much Intel-focused, and so while ANDF is still of interest to them, it's essentially [a low priority] in terms of funding because they've got so many things on their plate right now. UniNews: What ANDF programs are going on now? Johnson: There are three major funding efforts for ANDF right now. One of them is a research project that we're involved in, looking at the ANDF and how it can apply to portability within the high-performance arena. That's under U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funding in Cambridge, Mass. The other efforts are in Europe. The on-line Open Microprocessor Systems Initiative/Global Language Support and Uniform Environment (OMI/GLUE) project, which actually precedes the Deploy project, is strictly focused on ANDF. It started in June 1992 with a three-year run on it. The purpose of the GLUE project was to try to determine if ANDF was suitable both for additional architectures and for additional languages. There are a number of different deliverables, some which have already come out of that. One that OSF was a key player in was an ANDF validation suite which actually provides a way of validating components in an ANDF system. If you are going to use ANDF as a distribution vehicle, then you are dependent on the ANDF producer, the ANDF installer to properly install it, and the target runtime system on the target platform to behave in accordance with the API specifications. The only one of those where existing test suites existed was for the last one, where you have things like the X/Open validation suite for exercising the various application programming interfaces. OSF is essentially working on developing a validation suite for the other two key components in the ANDF chain-one of them for validating installers and the other one for validating producers. The installer validation suite is completed and available to the partners now. And the producer validation suite is now under development and will be delivered sometime toward the middle of next year. There's actually a prototype of that running. The Deploy project is fairly new and oriented more toward education on what ANDF is all about, as well as trying to further the work that's being done in the validation and test area. And it involves a number of partners such as X/Open, which may well end up promoting ANDF as a standard vehicle. One of the things that X/Open does is maintain de facto standards like the X/Open Portability Guide. They will also be taking over the specifications for things like the the Common Open Software Environment (COSE). ANDF is a logical adjunct to that because ANDF is the technology that can make COSE a reality. We have an environment already that will support Spec 1170, so you can actually develop applications against that 1170 specification and get diagnostics out, if your programs exceed the bounds of that specification. So you would have ways of checking portability against that frame of reference already. UniNews: If you have to have an installer on the machine, is that a limiting factor in the spread of ANDF? Johnson: Early on we wanted to show that the ANDF technology was not a black-box technology that necessarily required expertise, with the DRA technology. We built an installer family that has a bridge that goes between the ANDF external representation and the GCC back end. UniNews: Wait. What's a GCC? Johnson: GCC is the Gnu C Compiler. That's the C compiler that's available from the Free Software Foundation (FSF). You can freely pick it up if you have the network or you can get it by just ordering it from FSF. Virtually every UNIX platform has GCC running on it. It's not sold by any of the system vendors but there's a GCC running on all these platforms because it's a full ANSI-compliant C compiler, which the compilers of many of the system vendors are not. So if you get ANSI C applications and you need to compile them, as frequently is the case, then the Gnu C compiler is your only method for doing that. UniNews: Okay, then what does the bridge do? Johnson: As a result of having this bridge, anyplace where you have a Gnu C compiler, you have an ANDF installer. And there's a GCC nearby for just about any platform that you can think of. So that's not a limiting factor. We have installers running on [DEC] Alphas, we have them running on [IBM] RS/6000s, on the HP boxes, and on Intel chips. The real limiting factor has largely been the acceptance in the marketplace, the fact that it's yet another technology. And in some cases there has been resistance from system vendors, largely because they have in-house compiler groups and the in-house compiler groups don't view ANDF as their friend. UniNews: Because ANDF would supplant them? Johnson: It has the potential of doing that. The experiment we did with the Gnu compiler basically says that if you can do this with GCC, which has certain known properties, you can do the same thing with an existing vendor's compiler. So that if you have poured in 15 or 20 staff years of worth of work on your global optimizer, you don't have to lose all that work by picking up ANDF because you can build a bridge technology, just like we did with GCC. We showed that you can not only do that but you can do it trivially. A number of vendors have looked at this and said that to build a similar interface to their proprietary back end is basically a no-brainer. So that's not really an issue either. It's definitely more of a political or marketing issue at this point than anything else. We even did a port of this technology to [a Microsoft Windows] NT system. Microsoft looked at it and said that we solved the problem we said we were going to solve. Their issue is simply what they consider the cutoff point as to how effectively they can utilize the ANDF technology. The cutoff is when they have reached a critical mass in the number of platforms they feel they have to support with NT. Their guess on that number was something like six or seven and right now there are only about three or maybe four platforms that currently have active NT ports going on. Until that number gets larger, they can't justify further expenditures on ANDF. UniNews: What is the best possibility for use of ANDF now? Johnson: There are two things. The Deploy project itself is trying to promote the proliferation of the ANDF technology. They are trying to get some case studies through some application vendors to actually do some porting of applications into ANDF. We've had some experience doing that here ourselves. We did a port of key components of Oracle including the database manager itself into ANDF, and then ran them on a variety of platforms. So we know that there's a fairly straightforward approach you can take to doing this. But we don't want to be in the business of continually doing application ports, so we're trying to encapsulate this knowledge base and get the ISVs themselves to investigate what it takes to do this, and what the derived benefits can be. Rather than having to do a whole bunch of customized ports of their application every time a new platform comes out or a new version of an operating system comes out, if the API is the same between the two versions, with ANDF you can simply reinstall your application on the new system and you're back on the air again. When you deal with somebody like Oracle, which has something like 120 identified UNIX ports of their database software, this is a big win for them. It considerably lowers your maintenance cost if you don't have that many different variants of the same product that you have to maintain. It usually takes about half an engineer for each one of those ports just to maintain it. The Deploy project clearly is geared toward there being a commercial acceptance of ANDF. We just started on a project where we will be serving as a distribution channel of the ANDF technology for the research and academic marketplace. We have funding to do that. We're going to make this bridge technology that we have built, plus other components of the DRA technology, available in that arena so that there can be a proliferation of experience with ANDF beyond just OSF and the people that are out there immediately associated with OSF. Then we get a much larger spread of experience with ANDF and I think that with that experience, especially if it's a positive experience, will come further proliferation. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Affiliate News --------------- *** Seattle UNIX Group The Seattle UNIX Group, with 140 members, makes socializing an integral part of its meetings and finds that those activities help keep attendance up. The Seattle group is 10 years old and meets monthly at a local community center. But the two-hour meetings are always followed by an informal gathering at a nearby tavern and pizza establishment, The Islander, says Ray Jones, a member of the group's board of directors. The board's meetings are always well attended because board members get to take turns picking the restaurant where they'll meet. "We get to sample different restaurants all over the Seattle area," Jones reports. "It turns out to be a good social thing for the members of the board of directors." The regular membership meetings usually feature a tutorial at the new-user level, in addition to a guest speaker from a vendor company or a presentation by a local guru on a technical topic. Another popular feature of the meetings, held the second Tuesday of each month from 7 to 9 p.m., is a verbal exchange of information on jobs available and positions wanted. "People who have positions that they would like to have filled by UNIX experts come to the meeting. They explain what the job is. Then people stand up and say what they're looking for. We've made several cross-matches that way." The meeting presentations tend to be a mix of technical topics and "what's new and what's going on," Jones says. "If you have it all one way or all the other, you lose half the group," Jones notes. Another way the group serves its membership is by giving each paid member an e-mail account and a connection to the Internet via the group's own dedicated server. The group also maintains a jobs mailing list on the Internet, which advertises available jobs for those with UNIX experience. The Seattle affiliate was one of the first to join UniForum's joint membership program and finds that a good way of getting new members, along with its monthly ad in the Puget Sound Computer User newspaper. For additional information on the Seattle UNIX Group, contact Jones or Bill Campbell at (206) 236-1676 or at the group's Internet address, slug@seaslug.org. *** Southwest!UniForum Southwest!UniForum, the UniForum affiliate in the Phoenix area, will be reorganizing itself in September, putting all dues-paying members on an annual September-to-September cycle, and giving each member a new e-mail address and login ID for the group's own bulletin board service. Glenn Schulke, founder and president of the six-year-old group, says the group recently received a machine donated by Sun Microsystems to handle the e-mail accounts and its BBS. Southwest!UniForum meetings are in recess for the summer but will be starting again this fall, Schulke reports. Meetings are usually attended by about 35 persons, and the group has a mailing list of 330. A vendor or technical presentation is usually the main event of each meeting. Past speakers have represented Sun Microsystems, The Santa Cruz Operation, Veritas, Tandem, and Stratus, among others. A general question-and-answer session is usually included, when members can ask "how-to" questions about specific technical topics. Meetings are usually announced in the Arizona Computer User publication. For further information, contact Schulke at (602) 756-2806 or via e-mail at glenn@unizone.com. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ For Cold Summer Nights... -------------------------- Get a UniForum Sweatshirt for $20. Phone (800) 255-5620 or (408) 986-8840 for more information. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ UniNews Recruitment and Positions Wanted ----------------------------------------- For inclusion in the UniNews Classified Section, please provide the following information, being as specific as possible. If you do not want your name printed, please indicate in item No. 1 and UniNews will receive replies and forward them to you. Please type or write legibly. Your classified may be edited for length or clarity. UniNews "Positions Wanted" classifieds are available FREE OF CHARGE to UniForum members only. Upon receipt of your material, we will publish your classified in the next TWO available issues of the biweekly UniNews. YOU MUST BE A MEMBER OF UNIFORUM TO PARTICIPATE 1. Your name Shall we print your name in UniNews? Your UniForum Membership # (if available) ________________________________________ 2. Where Hiring Companies May Reach You (include phone, fax and e-mail) ________________________________________ 3. Title and Description of the Job You Want ________________________________________ 4. Geographical Preference ________________________________________ 5. Professional Experience and Qualifications ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ 6. Highest Grade or Degree Achieved, and Where: ________________________________________ ________________________________________ 7. Salary Range $_______ 8. Availability ________________________________________ You may mail or fax this form to: Sandy Parker UniForum 2901 Tasman Drive, Suite 205 Santa Clara, CA 95054 (408) 986-8840 (phone) (408) 986-1645 (fax) GOOD LUCK! POSITIONS WANTED *** Sales Account Rep Seeks position as sales account representative. Experience: 15 years of sales experience in multi-user business applications. Personal: B.A. with political science major, psychology minor; prefer northwestern states; salary $80K to $100K; available in 30 days. John Flaxman, (510) 484-5383. *** Sales/Sales Management Seeks position in sales or sales management. Experience: 20 years in sales and marketing of software and hardware. Personal: B.S., mathematics; M.S. computer science, MIT; prefer northwest or southwest; salary $80K to $100K; available in two weeks. Box O-UniNews, UniForum Association, 2901 Tasman Dr. #205, Santa Clara, CA 95054; fax (408) 986-1645. *** Analyst/Technical Consultant Seeks position as analyst or technical consultant. Experience: 9+ years in multiplatform environments, UNIX, VAX/VMS, DOS, NetWare, Windows 3.1; Windows 3.1; C/C++, Fortran, Pascal, Visual Basic, Paradox PAL, BASIC, assembly languages, relay ladder logic; 2 years system analysis design, configuration, exposure to Servio ODBMS and SmallTalk. Personal: B.S., physics, Clarkson University, Potsdam, N.Y.; prefer Cedar Rapids, IA, or Kansas City; salary open; available immediately. Derick Deleo, (319) 363-1167 or CompuServe 71003,2355. *** Systems Operations, Communications Seeks position in systems operations and communications. Experience: 13 years in UNIX operations and communications. Personal: A.A., computer science, Abraham Baldwin College, Tifton, GA; prefer western North Carolina; salary $30K to $35K; available January 1995. Box P-UniNews, UniForum Association, 2901 Tasman Dr. #205, Santa Clara, CA 95054; fax (408) 986-1645. *** Vice President/Director of Software Development Seeks position as vice president or director of software development for a post-startup high-tech company. Experience: 19+ years in software development, project management, product evaluation and business planning. Held senior positions at two startup companies. Currently manager of computer product center. Personal: B.S., EE, Alexandria University (Egypt); B.S., math, London University; M.S. and Ph.D., engineering-economic systems/computer science, Stanford University; prefer San Francisco Bay Area; salary $90K to $100K; available September/October. Box N-UniNews, UniForum Association, 2901 Tasman Dr. #205, Santa Clara, CA 95054; fax (408) 986-1645. *** Senior Software Engineer Seeks contract to accomplish a defined mission as senior software engineer. Experience: UNIX computer scientist; defense electronics/ECM, utility power generation, real-time control/DAC, transaction databases, simulation, kernel architecture, technical writing. Personal: M.S., computer science, Farleigh Dickinson University; prefer central Virginia, will travel; contract negotiable; seeking clients now. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ UniForum Member Benefits ------------------------- Publications, Conferences, Discounts and More Price goes up to $125 soon. Renew now! Benefits for General Members: ($100 per year until Sept. 1; $125 per year after Sept. 1): o UniForum Monthly magazine and UniNews biweekly newsletter; Free ads in the "Positions Wanted" section of UniNews; Open Systems Products Directory; All UniForum Technical Guides; Discounts on purchases of additional UniForum publications; Discounts on all UniForum conference registrations; Educational seminars and special classes; Opportunity to participate in local Affiliate activities. o Discounts on Avis car rentals. o Discounts on corporate sponsors' hardware and software: o Specialix Inc. sales, (800) 423-5364, (408) 378-7919 or fax: (408) 378-0786. e-mail: info@specialix.com o Mortice Kern Systems (MKS), 35 King St. North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2J 2W9. Phone: (519) 884-2251 or (800) 265-2797; fax (519) 884-8861 or e-mail inquiry@mks.com. o Discounts on products, training and publications from the following companies: o Locus Computing Corp., 9800 La Cienega Blvd., Inglewood, CA 90301-4400. Or call (310) 670-6500. o InterCon Systems, (800) NET2YOU or (800) INTERCON. o Gemini Learning Systems, (403) 263-UNIX or fax (403) 261-4688. o ACI Technology Training, 500 Park Blvd., Suite 1111, Itasca, IL 60143; phone (708) 285-7800 or fax (708) 285-7440. o Open Systems Training, 4400 Computer Drive, Westboro, MA 01580; phone (800) 633-UNIX or fax (508) 898-2382. o Open Systems Alternatives (Steve Kastner), 250 Production Plaza, Cincinnati, OH 45219; (513) 733-4798; fax (513) 733-5194. o ITDC, 4000 Executive Park Drive #310, Cincinnati, OH 45241; (513) 733-4747; fax (513) 733-5194. o Nina Lytton's Open Systems Advisor, (617) 859-0859 or write OSA at 268 Newbury St., Boston, MA 02116. o Patricia Seybold Group's Monthly Reports, Don Baillargeon, (617) 742-5200 ext. 17; 148 State St., Boston, MA 02109. o .sh consulting, call (408) 241-8319 or write to 3355 Brookdale Dr., Santa Clara, CA 95051. o Faulkner Information Systems, 114 Cooper Center, 7905 Browning Road, Pennsauken, NJ 08109-4319. o QED Information Sciences Inc., 170 Linden St., P.O. Box 82-181, Wellesley, MA 02181; (800) 343-4848. o Specialized Systems Consultants Inc., P.O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155-0649; (206) 527-3385; fax: (206) 527-2806. o Client/Server Tool Watch: Enabling Open Applications Development from Hurwitz Consulting Group (Dena Brody), P.O. Box 218, Newton, MA 02159; (617) 965-7691; fax (617) 969-7901. o Client/Server News from G2 Computer Intelligence, P.O. Box 7, Glen Head, NY 11545; (516) 759-7025; fax: (516) 759-7028. o Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (Dan O'Gara), One Jacob Way, Reading, MA 01867 (800) 238-9682; fax (617) 944-7273. Send your correspondence to Susan J. Hoffmann, Membership Services Manager, (408) 986-8840, ext. 26; (800) 255-5620, ext. 26 or via e-mail at sooz@uniforum.org. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ End UniNews.