From: IMAGING.CLUB@OFFICE.WANG.COM ("Imaging Club")
Newsgroups: comp.newprod
Subject: Banyan Systems Charts Product Strategy for Enterprise Network Services
Date: 25 Aug 92 15:54:20 GMT
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Mail to News Gateway at Wang Labs

WESTBORO, Mass., July 27, 1992 -- Banyan Systems today announced a product
strategy to make its enterprise network services available for multiple
computing environments in addition to the company's traditional VINES
network operating system.   The first products to deliver enterprise network
services to customers with non-Banyan environments include VINES for SCO
UNIX, announced today, and a new network interoperability product to support
Novell NetWare environments which will be announced and shipped later this
year.

The company has developed this strategy for enterprise network services to
meet a fast growing customer need for solutions which will make enterprise
networks easy to use and manage regardless of the type of network in use.

"The bigger and more complex that networks become, the greater the need for
Banyan's enterprise network services," said James D. D'Arezzo, Banyan Vice
President, marketing.  "Enterprise networks represent the fastest growing and
most dynamic market segment -- about $900 million in 1992 and growing at a
rate of more than 20% per year according to projections based on industry
estimates."

    BANYAN TO DELIVER NETWORK SERVICES FOR ENTERPRISE ENVIRONMENTS

Banyan has always focused on making enterprise networks easier to use
and manage.  A critical part of that focus has been the company's
emphasis on delivering enterprise-capable network services.  VINES,
Banyan's flagship product, began shipping in 1985 as the only network
operating system (NOS) with integrated enterprise network services.
The suite of Banyan services has become more powerful over the years.

To make enterprise network services available to broad segments of the
industry, Banyan will deliver them in three ways.  First, Banyan is
committed to continue to enhance and deliver VINES as the most
cost-effective enterprise networking solution in the industry.  The value
of VINES will continue to grow as the company leverages its
investments in enterprise network services.

Second, Banyan is committed to deliver enterprise network services in
a variety of open UNIX environments.  The power of VINES and its
enterprise network services, with an open UNIX server, is an optimal
solution for customers requiring the integration of PCs within the
UNIX environment.  The first of these products, VINES for SCO UNIX,
was announced today as the first deliverable resulting from a 1991
relationship between Banyan and the Santa Cruz Operation.

Third, Banyan is extending the reach of enterprise network services
so that other network users can gain access to them.  These services
are independent of the underlying NOS.  This allows Banyan to offer
enterprise network services to customers who have installed products
such as NetWare, without forcing them to revisit their previous
network decisions.  By layering Banyan's services over the installed
NOS, more users can gain access to an enterprise network without
displacing their existing investment in software and hardware.  Novell's
NetWare will be the first non-Banyan NOS platform to receive Banyan's
enterprise network services later this year.

       CUSTOMERS, DEVELOPERS AND RESELLERS VOICE ENTHUSIASM
          FOR BANYAN'S ENTERPRISE NETWORK SERVICES PLANS

"Banyan's strategy to make its network services operating-system
independent should prove a powerful incentive for software
developers.  By creating new software applications that take
advantage of Banyan network services, developers can virtually
guarantee that their products will meet their customers' enterprise-
wide computing requirements," said Art Beckman, manager of
information technology services, Pacific Gas & Electric, and chairman,
Network Applications Consortium.  NAC is an independent group of
large corporations committed to fostering the development of
enterprise networking software applications.

"Wordperfect sees real value in developing enterprise applications
that put Banyan's network services to work for all customers,
regardless of their choice of operating systems or network," said
Dan Lunt, vice president of marketing, WordPerfect Corporation.
"We look forward to working with Banyan to bring the power of both
our technologies together for the benefit of network users everywhere."

"Many of our large corporate clients with established enterprise-wide
networks have a clear need for the kinds of network services that
Banyan has historically provided," said Steve Bush, chief technical
officer of The Asset Group, a nationwide network integration
organization based in Houston, whose members are Banyan Premier Network
Integrators.  "These services are certainly applicable to environments
other than VINES."

The term "network services" is being used with growing frequency within
the network computing industry.  Banyan defines a network service as
a software program that makes a set of resources available to other
software programs across a network.

The function of a service generally varies with the set of resources
that it is making available.  For example, a print service is responsible
for accepting and managing a stream of print jobs flowing to a shared
network printer.  Similarly, a 3270 emulation service gives other machines
on the network access to a central host environment.

There are many possible types of network services.  Among these
are file services which provide a shared file system resource to
multiple workstations, directory services which help name and
locate other network entities, and calendar services which can
coordinate the personal schedules of multiple network users.

Another important category of network service is the enterprise
network service.  Banyan defines an enterprise network service
as one that can make its resources available to a mission-
critical network consisting of many workgroups and host computer
systems.

There are three key ways in which enterprise network services are
different from those available in most workgroup networking
environments:

*  Enterprise network services must be designed from the start to
   be more robust, due to the mission-critical nature of enterprise
   networks and the sheer size of some enterprise networks.

*  Enterprise network services must be able to integrate
   heterogeneous environments, because, by their nature, enterprise
   networks consist of systems from many different vendors and of
   many different generations.

*  Enterprise network services must offer capabilities that are
   appropriate for the enterprise environment.  For example, a
   distributed directory service is vital where the population of
   network resources to be named is very large and dynamic.