Newsgroups: bit.listserv.big-lan
Date:         Tue, 6 Oct 1992 10:46:09 EDT
From:         BIG-REQ@SUVM.BITNET
Subject:      BIG-LAN Digest, Volume 4, Number 65, Tuesday, October 6, 1992

BIG-LAN DIGEST           Tuesday, 6 October 1992       Volume 4 : Issue 65

Today's Topics:

                        VINES users air wish list
                 Banyan users laud firm's strategy shift
              Unix Hosts As Primary Nodes On An SNA Network

Moderated by John Wobus, Syracuse University

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Date: 02 Oct 92 16:59:13 EST
From: IMAGING.CLUB@OFFICE.WANG.COM ("Imaging Club")
Subject:      VINES users air wish list

As requested:
                           COMPUTERWORLD
                         September 28, 1992

          Vines users air wish list, complaints during Q&A

Although Banyan Systems, Inc. users were generally happy with the direction
the company is taking, they took advantage of a question and answer session
with company executives to air a list of requests topped by complaints over
Banyan's upgrade pricing matrix for its five-, 10-, and 20-user version of
VINES.

Under that matrix, the price increase from five to 20 users is approximately
$1,000 more than double the price increase from five to 10 users.

Although the pricing was announced in February, most users were unaware of
the change until recently--and decidedly unhappy about it.  Banyan officials
promised to review the pricing structure but held out little hope that it
would change.  "We studied our pricing structure thoroughly and felt that this
was the best pricing for the value offered," said Jim D'Arrezzo, Banyan's
marketing vice president.

Banyan users also express concern about migrating from their Banyan
Corporate Network Servers (CNS), the non-industry standard 386- and 486-
based serves that Banyan has stopped selling.  Banyan responded that while
it still considered the CNS systems to be robust platforms, it would soon
announce special pricing programs for those wishing to move to Vines on
industry-standard personal computer server platforms.  CNS hardware would
be depreciated by users in the normal course of business.

Users also bombarded executives with requests to extend Vines support to
a number of platforms, including the following:

* Support for RISC-based systems, both as server platforms and as clients.
Banyan replied that it is in the process of choosing the first RISC platform
to which it will port Vines, and it polled users on their favorite RISC
platform.

* Scalable Processor Architecture-based machines from Sun Microsystems,
Inc. were the overwhelming user choice.

* Users also asked if Banyan could shrink the size of its native
protocols to lessen network traffic and free random-access memory
on the client.  Banyan said it was always trying to optimize Vines to
reduce network traffic.  However, the company would give no timetable
for enabling users to load Vines into extended memory, which prompted
angry murmurs from users.

* Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) support for Vines 5.0.  SMP support is
available for Vines 4.1.  Banyan officials promised that SMP support would
be included in the forthcoming "merge release" of the two versions of the
Vines operating system.

* 5250 terminal emulation support so that Vines can enjoy the same
interoperability with IBM Application System/400s as they do with IBM
mainframes.  Banyan said no such product was in the works but that it
would investigate further.

* Support for application servers, such as print and mail servers.
Banyan officals suggested that users investigate using machines running
Vines on SCO Unix as application servers.

-------------------------------------------------------

From: IMAGING.CLUB@OFFICE.WANG.COM ("Imaging Club")
Subject:      Banyan users laud firm's strategy shift
Date: 02 Oct 92 16:40:52 EST

As you requested:

                        COMPUTERWORLD
                      September 28, 1992

BOSTON -- Recent personnel and strategy changes at Banyan Systems,
Inc., the Westboro, Mass.-based local-area network vendor, were
enthusiastically received by information systems managers attending
the Association of Banyan Users International (ABUI), meeting last
week.

Previous ABUI conferences were characterized by user complaints about
late products, poor support and corporate arrogance.  In contrast, this
year's attendees were uniformly positive about changes in Banyan's
corporate culture, especially its new multiplatform strategy.

"The thing I'm really happy about is the new interoperability stuff.
Selling their Enterprise Network Services for Novell's NetWare and
connecting to Unix by porting to The Santa Cruz Operation's (Unix)
are good starts; now they need to keep it up, connect to more
platforms," said Bill Sheehan, a support specialist at Boston-based
Stone and Webster Engineering Corp.

ABUI officials and members attribute the changes largely to key
personnel additions.  Three months ago, Peter Hamilton, a 20-year
veteran of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Network and System Management and
OpenView Products Division, assumed the title of Banyan president and
chief operating officer.  Founder David Mahoney remained chief executive
officer and chairman.

"We now have a three-prong strategy," Hamilton said in an interview.
"We will develop our Enterprise Network Services product for other
platforms besides Novell, and we will port our Vines OS to other
platforms."  SCO Unix was the first, but other ports will follow,
including reduced instruction set computing, he said.

As evidence of Banyan's new openness, Hamilton cited strategic alloances
and support agreements with Digital Equipment Corp., Gupta Technologies,
Inc., Synoptics Communications, Inc., Apple Computer, Inc., Novell, Inc.,
Compaq Computer Corp., NCR Corp. and Microsoft Corp.  "To better serve
our customers, we're building quality alliances so we can provide
collaborative support and interoperability to our mutual clients," he
said.

Banyan has long had the reputation of a company with great technology
and horrible marketing.  However, in 1990, Jim D'Arezzo, formerly
vice president for European and international marketing at Compaq,
became Banyan's vice president of marketing.  Most Banyan users said
they admire the job he has done in expanding Banyan's market presence.

Under D'Arezzo, Banyan has shifted its emphasis from direct sales to
building an effective reseller channel, which has helped Banyan gain
mind share in the LAN community and Banyan users gain better access to
support.  While IS often complains about reseller support, some Banyan
users claim that before these changes were implemented, they had difficulty
getting support from anyone.

"We now have over 1,000 selling sites worldwide, which is double what we
had a year ago," D'Arezzo said.  "We're building our channel slowly
because we want to guarantee that the resellers we add can provide good
support for Vines users."

"Banyan has just opened up so much in the last year," said ABUI Vice
President Ted Kull at the Philadelphia office of Banyan (and Novell)
reseller Frederick Computers Plus.  "They're meeting deadlines,
improving their marketing and building user contacts.

-------------------------------------------------------

Date: 04 Oct 1992 11:12:40 -0600 (MDT)
From: PONEIL@cudnvr.denver.colorado.edu
Subject:      Unix Hosts As Primary Nodes On An SNA Network

I have been asked to make an Oracle SQL*Forms Application running on a
Pyramid MIS-12 available to folks on an SNA network.  I'd like to hear
from anyone with recent relevant experience, particularly in the Baby Bell
environment.

I'd also like some help on the appropriate SNA terminology relating to
this project.  Thanks.

-------------------------------------------------------


End of BIG-LAN Digest
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