Connecting PCs to Open Systems? UniForum '95 Tells How

Integrating e-mail systems, LANs with UNIX is track topic

Open systems is intruding on the proprietary world in ways that might not have been expected a year or two ago, especially in the need to connect networks of PCs and Macintoshes with larger UNIX systems and with the Internet.

That's the basis for the UniForum '95 Conference track "Upsizing and Integrating PCs with Open Systems," one of ten tracks in the March 14-17 conference in Dallas. The track is designed for managers of PC LANs who don't want to throw out their existing systems in favor of UNIX, but who need to make their networks interoperate with some facet of open systems. The need to integrate may be spurred by a number of reasons, according to David Bernstein, track chair and vice president of product development for Electronic Publishing Resources, Inc.

For example:

Bernstein gives a typical scenario: "Say you had a PC LAN down in the manufacturing department, and for some reason the manufacturing resource planning software that was chosen ran on the big UNIX machine. So it arrives-now what do you do? How would you set that up? Or you've got one department that uses cc:Mail and one department that uses Microsoft mail, and now you want to create a corporate e-mail system. I probably want to install a nice, big UNIX box with good backup, and maybe it's got to be pretty powerful, but it's got to hook up to all these different networks and deal with these different e-mail applications. How do I do that?"

The typical track attendee will be a network administrator, IS director, or system administrator who has a PC network running Windows and linked with NetWare, but needs information about how to start adding open systems components. "We'll have a number of vendors discuss how they could set up UNIX servers to serve PC desktops," Bernstein says. "We'll have some people talk about integrating software, and even a software developer's perspective on Windows and UNIX desktops"

The track sessions include:

Reynolds says his session will be addressed to both users of NetWare who need to connect to UNIX, and to UNIX users needing NetWare connectivity. He will discuss Novell offerings including NewWare NFS, UnixWare, LAN Workplace and LAN Workgroup. "A lot of people from the UNIX environment are a little confused about how they can use NetWare," Reynolds says. "They need to know how to get into a NewWare environment. And I think it's also important for people running NetWare servers to know how to get access to application servers such as UNIX machines, which are more open."