------------------------------------------------------------ UniNews The Biweekly Newsletter For UniForum Members ------------------------------------------------------------ Issue Date: August 31, 1994 Volume VIII, Number 14 ------------------------------------------------------------ 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 High-tech Centers Lead in Company Internet Connections o Theme Set for UniForum '95 o Panel: Software Process Change Must Come from Within o Managing Risk in Process Evolution o Companies Warned: UNIX Belongs to X/Open o Personality Profile: David Bernstein - Silicon Valley Guy o UniForum UK Officially Becomes an Affiliate of UniForum o UniNews Recruitment and Positions Wanted o UniForum Member benefits ------------------------------------------------------------ High-tech Centers Lead in Company Internet Connections ------------------------------------------------------- California, Virginia cities have highest concentration of connected companies The well-publicized growth of the Internet has continued unabated over the last year, reports the Internet Society, the private organization that monitors Internet connections and tracks their growth. The total number of users has grown from just over 15 million to 32 million since April 1993, and the number of networks connected has more than tripled, from 10,000 to 35,000. Every 30 minutes a new network is connected, the society reports. However, an analysis of companies reveals that the preponderance of firms with Internet connections are still in the geographical areas with the highest concentration of high-tech industries: Northern California, Northern Virginia, Colorado, and the Boston area. When ranked according to companies connected per 1,000 residents, 23 of the top 25 U.S. Internet-connected cities fall within those four areas, according to information compiled by Internet Info, Falls Church, VA. Only Princeton, NJ, at the top of the list, and Beaverton, OR, number 24, do not. The largest single concentration of Internet-connected companies lies in California's Silicon Valley, with 10 of the top 25 cities-again, measured in companies per 1,000 residents. Virginia has seven cities in that group. Princeton comes in first with 39 companies and 3.25 companies per 1,000 residents, and Palo Alto, CA, is second, with 155 companies and 2.82 per 1,000 residents. However, measured in total number of companies connected, New York City is tops in the United States with 291 companies, followed by San Jose, CA, with 260, then San Francisco with 218. Two cities with fewer than 100,000 residents-Boulder, CO, and Santa Clara, CA, are fourth and fifth on that list, respectively. Even on the list of total connected companies, 10 of the top 25 cities are in Northern California. Those 25 cities more widespread geographically, however, with Dallas, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Ann Arbor on the list with the most companies. The analysis was based on the total of 14,726 U.S. companies registered with the Internet as of last April. The largest public companies with a heavy presence on the Internet are not necessarily technology companies, however. The list is topped by Exxon, with 261 networks and two domains connected. Others in the top 10, in order, are Transamerica, 259 networks and one domain; GTE, 228 networks, 14 hosts, and 12 domains; Unisys, 208 networks, three hosts, and three domains; Texas Instruments, 183 networks, one host, and two domains; Boeing, 139 networks, one host; Motorola, 137 networks, two hosts, and one domain; Hewlett-Packard, 136 hosts, and one domain; Commonwealth Edison, 128 networks, one host, and one domain; and Sprint, 58 networks, six hosts, and 11 domains. Of the 490 large public companies reviewed by Internet Info, 226 had some presence on the Internet. Large public companies were defined as having revenue of more than $1.5 billion a year based on their most recent filings with the Security and Exchange Commission. The total number of registered commercial domains on the Internet as of last June 15 was 15,384, of which 1,326 had registered in the previous month alone. California topped the list of states with 4,192 registered domains, 27 percent of the total, with a monthly growth rate of eight percent. Colorado was second with 959 domains and 7.9 percent monthly growth and Massachusetts third with 951 domains and 7.2 percent monthly growth. New York had the highest rate of monthly growth of the top 10 states, at 14.1 percent and 913 domains currently registered. Texas was fifth in total domains registered with 711. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Theme Set for UniForum '95 --------------------------- Conference and trade show will feature Solutions for Open Computing UniForum '95: Solutions for Open Computing is the theme for the upcoming UniForum Conference and Trade Show to be held March 12-16 at the Dallas Convention Center. "In deciding on this theme we wanted to build on the success of the 1994 theme-The Road to Open Systems", said Richard Jaross, UniForum Executive Director. " The emphasis last year was on delivering users a roadmap to help them get started on the way toward an open systems implementation, or to provide strategies to allow them to get there faster. I think we really delivered on that. Now, with open systems firmly imbedded as the model for enterprise computing, we felt that for 1995 our emphasis had to be on solutions that can be implemented throughout the complex world of open computing. We feel confident that the user and vendor community will embrace this theme and make it their own as they make their plans to attend and participate in the show next March," he said. The UniForum Conference Committee has received a record number of paper submissions from prospective session leaders and is in the process of settling on the session tracks that will define the overall content of the conference. "Our theme, Solutions for Open Computing, will be followed throughout the conference, said Deborah Bonnin, UniForum conference manager. "You'll see specific, user driven, solutions-based offerings in our session tracks, as well as in the tutorials, workshops and plenaries. The theme gives all our contributors and session organizers a rallying point as they begin to hone the content of the conference," she said. "We plan to provide solutions to problems faced by users especially in the realm of applications development, where we see an enormous opportunity for open systems growth." UniNews will begin to feature detailed coverage of the UniForum '95 Conference in upcoming issues. Members are urged to send UniNews comments and suggestions on the conference program as it develops. Member feedback will be shared with the conference organizers. Direct your comments via e-mail to pubs@uniforum.org or write to Don Dugdale, Senior Editor, UniForum, 2901 Tasman Drive #205, Santa Clara, CA 95054. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Panel: Software Process Change Must Come from Within ----------------------------------------------------- Programmers, managers scorn traditional, top-down methods The process of change in software development brought programmers and managers from government and industry to a meeting at the University of California at Irvine's Irvine Research Unit in Software (IRUS) in Palo Alto, CA, earlier this month. If there was one point of agreement among the speakers and the audience, it was that for change to be successful, it must come from within an organization. Change is needed to improve the software process, all agreed. However, "Very little change happens from top management," said James Bach, staff metrics engineer in language quality assurance at Borland, Scotts Valley, CA. "True, [the problems are] all their fault, but that doesn't change anything. Maybe we should make some of this our fault so that we can then do something about it. Quality improvement is always and only a personal transformation." Karl Kelley, a project supervisor at Loral in Palo Alto, and formerly supervisor of software process engineering there, said he wrestles with "the usual suspects" in software process improvement- including Total Quality Management and the Software Engineering Institute's change management doctrine. All the principles are right, Kelley said, but the problem comes in trying to implement them. "If you take principles and turn them into bureaucracy, you get junk," he said. The issues he faces are that there is not enough money to implement change, the customer won't pay for it, the need is not apparent to everyone, and everyone is too busy. Retraining software developers costs money and high-quality training costs even more. "Nobody wants to sit through low-quality training," Kelley said, and besides that, "You can't train and still get your current work done." Change is needed to improve quality, scheduling, ease-of-use, maintenance, and upgrades, said Greg Swietek, project manager at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA. Software reuse should also help, and all those changes are needed to cut costs. But as desirable as software process improvement is, "The motivation to change current practices must come from within," Swietek said And for that to happen, "The change process vehicle must spontaneously engage line employees, team leads, and middle/upper management." It helps to start slow on single issues, he said. Cross-pollination and a learn-while-doing attitude are also needed, he said. NASA Ames is being reorganized even as it develops projects such as remote control vehicles to explore the Antarctic under water and rove around Mars in 1997. Another problem with implementing change is that top management may give only lip service to process improvement, while keeping the short-term "bottom line" as their real priority, some in the audience said. And panelist Jim Gibson, a programmer from Recom Technologies, criticized what he called "change by buzzword." Management at his company said they supported TQM, but "We only got a one-day seminar. Then we went back to the old way of doing business. I didn't see a lot of change come out of this very significant initiative." Bach, who has been designated by Borland to devote all his time to process improvement, said that if he really wants to get things done, "I try to stay away from any kind of committee or task force. Usually you can find two or three people who have decided to do all the work, and work with them." It also helps to experiment informally, be tolerant, and use personal initiative, Bach said. "If I want a change made, it starts with me. My own ability to influence people is the biggest factor." He illustrated the problem of trying to change by directive with a story from his days working for Apple Computer. New criteria for software releases were issued, calling for no "Level 1" (most serious) bugs in the release. As a result, when Level 1 bugs were still present by the required release date, they were just demoted to Level 2 bugs. By all means, avoid manuals when deploying a new process, Bach asserts. "If you start with a 50-page manual, you might as well put a gun in their face," he says. "Any more than one page is a tome." Instead, use mentoring and "train ourselves and our teams to think situationally. That means focusing on cause and effect, and letting processes be provisional and experimental." Gibson agreed that "I think you have a problem when upper level management wants to institute a change but they can't sell it to the lower level." The meeting was one in a series by IRUS called the Bay Area RoundTable series. For further information, contact Debra Brodbeck, (714) 725-2260; brodbeck@ics.uci.edu. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Managing Risk in Process Evolution ----------------------------------- Process Evolution in a Mad World is the title of a paper by James Bach, staff metrics engineer in language quality assurance at Borland, Scotts Valley, CA. In it, he asserts that processes can change and evolve without the aid of a process control authority, through individual action. "Even if we can't get help from management, as long as the environment isn't actively hostile, each of us can individually work toward a better organization," Bach says. "For a dedicated process engineer like me, it's always nice if the organization both desires improvement and commits to working on it. Still, if one or both of these elements is weak or missing, as they usually are, then a risk-based, guerrilla method of evolution can be employed." Bach asserts that a strategy of risk management can be the most successful in making changes, and that it can occur within a leadership framework, without the need for process control. The usual formula for success in software development is to create the right environment, get the right people, determine the right course of action, and make everyone do it. However, risk management "seeks to optimize resources and maximize flexibility by identifying and prioritizing potential failures and deploying processes, whether controlled or uncontrolled, to the extent necessary to avoid the important failures. "Think of risk management as the art of protecting the project from failure," Bach says. "At each level, there is a dialog that goes on between risk thinking and success thinking. This often corresponds to an actual conversation between Development and Quality Assurance." Back can be contacted at (408) 431-1476 or via e-mail at jbach@netcom.com. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Companies Warned: UNIX Belongs to X/Open ----------------------------------------- As X/Open Co. prepares to accept the first applications for UNIX branding, the open systems standards organization is also notifying companies of the new correct way to refer to UNIX. All official references to UNIX in company literature, advertisements and public announcements should include the line: "UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Ltd." All references to AT&T, USL and Novell should be deleted. X/Open officially took possession of the UNIX trademark earlier this year after Novell's announcement in October 1993 that it would transfer the UNIX brand to X/Open's control. Since its birth in 1969, the use of the UNIX brand had been controlled tightly by its originator, AT&T and its spin-off, the former UNIX System Laboratories (USL). Novell bought USL last year. Since last October, X/Open has been developing specifications for awarding the UNIX brand, based on compliance with the Spec 1170 system interfaces and other standards. Publication of the X/Open specification for Spec 1170 is expected within a month or two, and applications probably will begin flowing into X/Open by the end of the year, according to X/Open spokesperson Jeff Hansen. The first branded UNIX products are expected by early in 1995. Sponsors of X/Open's unified UNIX project are Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell's UNIX Systems Group (formerly USL), the Open Software Foundation, and SunSoft. Products to be branded have to conform in four areas: the X/Open Portability Guide (XPG4), which lays down basic system interfaces, commands, and C language requirements; the Spec 1170 system interfaces; a set of internationalized terminal interfaces; and the network APIs, consisting of the sockets interface originated in Berkeley UNIX and since adopted by major vendors, and the X/Open Transport Interface (XTI), version 2. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ Personality Profile: David Bernstein - Silicon Valley Guy --------------------------------------------------------- Former SCO executive looks back at his UNIX accomplishments Name: David Bernstein Age: 36 Place of Birth: Orange, CA Position: Vice President of Engineering, Reach Software Years in Current Position: 1 Years in the Industry: 13 Car He Drives: 1990 Thunderbird Super Coupe ("It's red, and I always speed.") Last Book Read: "The truth is, I can't remember the last time I seriously read something that wasn't on-line, except to my kids." Pet Open Systems Peeve: Marketing people use the word open but the end user, the distributor, the reseller, or the systems integrator can tell you what open means and that is good enough. Open is not a marketing name; it means that it provides you with the price/performance, the benefits from choice, and the flexibility that you need. If it does, then for you it's open, whether it's called open or not." For the young David Bernstein, building a computer came as naturally as building a tree house did for other kids. The son of an engineer and an educational product of the Silicon Valley of the 70s, Bernstein followed his scientific bent into a career in computer software. In recent years, he was instrumental in The Santa Cruz Operation's participation in UNIX unification efforts such as The Common Open Software Environment (COSE), Common Desktop Environment (CDE) and UNIX International. Today he's vice president of engineering for Reach Software in Sunnyvale, CA, a provider of workflow software. Bernstein's father, a metallurgical engineer, moved from Southern California to the San Francisco Bay Area when David was young to work for some of the pioneering semiconductor firms, including Fairchild, National, Signetics, and Hewlett-Packard. "I got exposed to electronics," Bernstein recalls. "It was just part of what you did. We always had lots of TVs and stereos and I used to take apart telephones and radios. I built a kit computer from Popular Electronics when I was in high school. The school [in Cupertino] had tons of surplus equipment from all the companies in the valley. Most of the kids in my neighborhood had dads who worked at some semiconductor company. I was a Silicon Valley kid and it didn't seem like there was anything else to do." Part way through high school, Bernstein's family moved to Santa Cruz, a beach town 30 miles from Silicon Valley, where a new campus of the University of California had sprung up. One day in 1974, he and some friends decided to go to the university campus, nestled in the redwoods, and have a look around. "They had just installed some DEC PDP11s running a very early version of UNIX," Bernstein remembers. That was really one of my first software experiences because it was a real computer. Providentially, I guess, it was my first exposure to UNIX." Bernstein would later graduate from UC Santa Cruz and become a developer and proponent of UNIX. *** Choosing Santa Cruz "I was definitely going be an engineer," he says. He chose UC Santa Cruz because it was close to home, but also because of its strong core of natural science courses. He graduated with majors in math and physics. "I really believed I was going to be involved in some kind of a physical or material science career all the way through. Even though I enjoyed using computers, we thought that software and computers were not hard core. The chemical or physical sciences were hard core, and computers were a tool to use for real science." Bernstein put that physical science career on a sidetrack when he took his first job after graduating in 1981. "I knew UNIX and got a consulting job with a little local group of half a dozen guys who just did UNIX consulting," Bernstein says. That group of guys was the nucleus of The Santa Cruz Operation, the company that today is the leading provider of UNIX operating systems for Intel-based PCs. "They were just starting out that year," Bernstein says. "We were just consultants for hire. We would write device drivers or do consulting on UNIX systems or anything that would make a buck. It seemed to me like something good to do before I got a real job. And it just took off like crazy." The company's expertise in UNIX grew, as did interest in running UNIX on early PC hardware. A number of companies, including Zilog and Onyx, produced PCs based on Motorola's 68000 microprocessor, running some version of UNIX. At that time, AT&T would not license the name UNIX but would supply the source code, so companies came out with their own versions. When IBM came out with the Intel-based PC running DOS, other companies tried to clone it. "I remember Victor Computers, which was in Scotts Valley [near Santa Cruz] trying to make a PC clone," Bernstein says. "They were going to do a better job than IBM by supporting not only DOS but UNIX. They gave us the contract to do the UNIX work. "Eventually, Victor went under, but we thought UNIX on Intel PCs was a pretty neat idea, and we thought other people would. It certainly was better than DOS. It was on a whole different level. You could do multiuser and multitasking. Because Victor's machines weren't ready, we had used the IBM PC as a reference machine. It really was a very bad UNIX machine, but a few other guys and I got UNIX to work on it and we realized we had done something pretty neat. [In about 1984] SCO made a big announcement, when we had the three leading personal computers of the day-the IBM PC, the Apple Lisa and the DEC Pro 350-all running a version of UNIX from us. We were all very impressed with ourselves. We got the idea that we were now going to be the UNIX provider for PCs." SCO's hopes were further boosted by IBM's earliest version of the PC AT, based on Intel's 286 chip, which was to run an advanced operating system. "The 286 was designed by Intel to run a protected-mode operating system, and it wasn't going to be DOS," Bernstein says. "When you bought a PC AT you got UNIX on it from Microsoft. It was called Microsoft XENIX. Microsoft was at that time the leader in the UNIX business. We thought that, now that IBM was selling the PC AT with UNIX, we were there, we were dialed. But it turned out there were hardware bugs in the PC AT, so people ran DOS on it for awhile. Microsoft lost its chance with UNIX and UNIX lost its chance on the PC." SCO, however, still had plenty of business. "In the meantime, companies were coming to us for consulting. Microsoft got IBM's business and gave the rest to us, so we just kept cranking out those UNIX ports and turned our product into a retail product." SCO called its first UNIX product DYNIX, but sold that trademark to Sequent. ("We thought it was great that we could get money and not do any work.") Needing another name, SCO licensed the XENIX trademark from Microsoft for "a great price. That's how SCO got hooked up with Microsoft in this strange story." SCO eventually found its niche through its early device driver work. "When we were in the earlier business doing work on PDP11s and VAXs, there was quite an aftermarket in PDP11 and VAX add-in cards. You could buy a disk controller from Emulex instead of Digital and it would be faster and cheaper. A lot of people asked us to write UNIX drivers for third-party peripherals for DEC systems. When we saw the PC architecture come out, we said, 'Wow, we're going to get a lot of consulting deals for writing drivers for third-party cards.' In fact, we thought this whole add-in market was going to be very important. So we started calling up hardware people and we did a whole bunch of device drivers for their ports. A lot of the VARs and system integrators came to us saying they wanted to mix and match boards and machines, and could we give them a package of UNIX that has all the drivers. We turned that into a product which really sold. That was SCO UNIX, first for the 286, and then for the 386." *** Increasing Responsibility As SCO grew, so did Bernstein's responsibility, first as director of engineering for operating system products, then as director of product marketing, where he continued to make the decisions on which features were to be included in each new release. In 1990 he became SCO's director of technology. "Then the bar got raised," he says. "It wasn't enough just to make a multiuser UNIX machine anymore. You had to make a networked graphical system, with X Windowing, TCP/IP, Network File System and everything else. These weren't just for the fringe elements anymore. We needed to get all this technology very quickly, to come out with SCO Open Desktop. My job was to obtain all that technology. All of a sudden we found ourselves competing with the HP workstation, the Sun workstation, and the IBM RS/6000. We had to have technology just as good as theirs but built for a PC and without having their 5,000 engineers to build it. So we bought a lot of technology." From the start, SCO's idea was to enable customers to build systems by mixing and matching parts. "To us, the concept of open systems started with saying that customers can build their own computers out of standard components, and now they don't have to buy the software from the place they bought the hardware." The application side of the company contributed to the concept by porting various popular applications for customers, allowing them to buy those off the shelf to complete their systems. It was "absolutely ridiculously hard" to convince users that they actually could build their own systems from parts, Bernstein admits. "We spent years on the brink of extinction because of that. Luckily we weren't alone. UniForum and other organizations were very important to us because we weren't the only ones trying to give this pitch. "The two most compelling arguments were first, the cost/benefit equation-you could do the same thing for less if you could load it yourself. Second was freedom of choice. For example, Digital had some absurd policies. If you put somebody else's board into their system it would invalidate your warranty. People thought that was onerous. The reason people started buying these small computers was to get away from the absurd policies of the minicomputer and mainframe computer people. Fundamentally, the market wants choices." Today, Bernstein is still active in communicating the open systems message as a member of the 1995 UniForum Conference Planning Committee. It was also to further open systems that SCO sent Bernstein to work on initiatives such as the Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) and COSE/CDE, and in multivendor consortia such as UNIX International and the Open Software Foundation. "Remember, all this time UNIX was a fundamentally superior operating system," he says. "Its whole multiuser thing and its networking were way ahead. But this is not to say that SCO succeeded as much as we should have. In the end, we made a tiny, tiny dent in Microsoft's rise to power. So it's not like we really succeeded. But basically, the core technical teams stuck to the original goal, which was to get the most out of the machine. That was not the DOS way-making the fewest changes you can get away with." *** Proudest Moments Bernstein looks on two events in his long SCO tenure as the most memorable. The first was a sale to AT&T. When the company that invented UNIX came out with its personal computer in 1985, it needed a PC version of UNIX to run on the machine. Bernstein sold XENIX to AT&T, which he calls, "probably our most satisfying achievement." The second event he likes to remember happened just last year, after UniForum '93, when Sun CEO Scott McNealy agreed, as part of the COSE initiative, that Sun would embrace the Motif graphical user interface and supply it for Sun developers. "When the dust settled behind the scenes of COSE, Sun found itself in a window between UniForum '93 and their own developers conference, when they suddenly needed to deliver Motif to their developers. They had never looked at Motif, and I knew there was no way they could build one for Sparc that was going to be quality. SCO owned IXI, and I licensed Sun the IXI version of Motif. It was one of those lifetime OS achievements. That was sweet revenge, I guess." Bernstein moved to Reach when "I actually thought that the operating system was becoming less important than a lot of the networking and services infrastructre coming out. I thought Lotus Notes was very important and I thought electronic mail was very important. So I joined a company whose products run on Windows and that uses electronic mail and Lotus Notes. It was a chance to join a startup again, with under 50 people, and run an engineering team again, and try to build some products in these exciting new areas. What I've learned in the open systems business has been completely invaluable in working in these other areas. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ UniForum UK Officially Becomes an Affiliate of UniForum -------------------------------------------------------- British organization has developed services to meet UK's special needs UniForum UK, like several of the international UniForum affiliates, has been a thriving organization on its own for more than 10 years. So when its affiliation with UniForum became official this month, the event was more like the beginning of a liaison than an adoption. The British organization, with 1,232 current members, began as a UNIX user group, like many current affiliates, in 1983. Originally called /usr/group/uk, the group became UniForum UK in 1989, following the lead of its U.S. counterpart. "The original idea came from the States, to start a UNIX user group of like-minded individuals who, at that time, were of a fairly technical background, to meet regularly, and discuss issues and swap information on what was then very much a new era with UNIX," says Philip Flaxton, UniForum UK commercial director. "We have a well established membership base, a comprehensive list of publications, and we offer discounts to our members, run study tours for members to go to the UniForum show and UNIX Expo," Flaxton notes. The organization has sponsored various exhibitions in London over the years, beginning with the European UNIX User Show in 1985, continuing with an annual Open Systems exhibition, and leading up to the Enterprise IS event coming up in October. In addition, UniForum UK has been running its own seminar programs since the '80s, through relationships with X/Open, the Open Software Foundation, the British Department of Trade and Industry, and the former UNIX International. Most of the regular meetings are held within a 60-mile radius of London, although occasional ones are held in Northern England and Scotland. Usually the meetings consist of a seminar, followed by an open discussion of current issues. The organization consists of user members and "trading members" from the computer industry. "We sometimes invite our trading members, from the vendor community, to perhaps be present to talk with users in the membership," according to Flaxton. In addition, a subgroup called the Government UNIX Group meets quarterly, consisting entirely of officials from the central government, with meetings sponsored by a vendor. UniForum UK has an extensive range of publications, including its monthly magazine, Open Forum, with a circulation of 10,000 in the United Kingdom. Its annual industry guide and directory is published twice a year. Other publications have included a guide to POSIX and a compendium of application stories in an open systems environment called the User Case Book. One of the latest publication efforts of UniForum UK has been an agreement with the Financial Times, the most influential business publication in Britain, to publish, twice a year, a supplement called Profiting from Open Systems. Through working with Financial Times, "We have significantly raised the profile of UniForum UK," Flaxton says. The next supplement is due to be published Oct. 14. Another new initiative of the organization has been the publication of its Trading Standards Code of Practice, a set of guidelines drawn up over a two-year period and designed to assist users in selecting a vendor to purchase from. "Vendors can be approved and accepted into our scheme when they become trading standards-compliant," Flaxton says. "What this means is that they have undergone scrutiny and are expected to abide by a certain set of criteria. Anyone purchasing or dealing with them from a user perspective can deal with confidence." The vendors agree to abide by a stringent set of rules. Then if anything goes wrong between the vendor and purchaser, "If they want to go to arbitration, we can actually act as an arbitrator." The program just began two months ago and has not been put to the test of providing arbitration yet. "This is a very big initiative for us," Flaxton says. UniForum UK is also looking into ways of working with organizations such as the Confederation of British Industries, a kind of lobbying group representing UK corporations. In its relationship with UniForum, Flaxton's organization hopes to work on joint initiatives in the UK and possibly the rest of Europe, as well as things like the trading standards project, on which UniForum UK could assist its U.S. counterpart. "Like you, we are looking to expand both the open systems marketplace and our membership," Flaxton says. "Through the Financial Times, we're reaching more end users and that's helping in our membership drive." 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) 986-1645. Good Luck! *** System Administration Seeks full-time position as UNIX system administrator/analyst. Experience: 7+ years managing and administering UNIX-based systems, including performance and capacity management and system requirements analysis. Additional duties include technical writing (developing training materials), teaching UNIX courses, second and third level customer support and ADP Planning. Personal: U.S. Army Center for Professional Development in conjunction with the University of Maryland, 198 credits; salary $60K+ depending on location; prefer New Jersey, Maryland, D.C., Virginia, or California; available 2-4 weeks after acceptance of an offer. Box R-UniNews, UniForum Association, 2901 Tasman Dr. #205, Santa Clara, CA 95054; fax (408) 986-1645. *** Software Operations Seeks position in software operations. Experience: order management, software production, shipping/receiving, pacing release cycle, customer support; 7 years' experience in operations; well versed in UNIX; developed department from scratch. Personal: B.A. in mathematics, M.B.A. Long Beach State University; salary open; available now. Chuck Niedle, phone (408) 446-9469. *** Product Manager Seeks position as product manager for a fast-growing software company. Experience: 16+ years of multilevel experience and a strong record of achievement in hardware and software products. Resourceful team player with a wide range of well-developed marketing and business administration skills. Excellent interpersonal, public speaking and writing skills. Personal: M.B.A., St. Mary's College, Moraga, CA; M.S., University of Connecticut; salary range $70K to $80K; prefer San Francisco Bay Area; available now. Box Q-UniNews, UniForum Association, 2901 Tasman Dr. #205, Santa Clara, CA 95054; fax (408) 986-1645. *** MIS Development Seeks position in MIS development using high/low level languages. Experience: 8 years developing general management systems, using network protocols, 4GLs, high/low level languages, SCO UNIX, large TCP/IP and NFS, sockets, NetWare and Windows for Workgroups. Personal: Salary range $30K; no geographical preference; available now. Claudio Lacerda, phone +55 31 441-8000 or fax +55 31 443-1000 (Brazil). End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ UniForum Member benefits ------------------------ Publications, Conferences, Discounts and More 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 NEW! Berkeley Decision Systems, 803 Pine St., Santa Cruz, CA 95062; phone (800) 408-8649 or fax (408) 458-2721. UNIX training video. 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 to sooz@uniforum.org. End Article ------------------------------------------------------------ End UniNews.