From: Darren_Smith@NeXT.COM (Darren Smith) Subject: DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION CHOOSES OPENSTEP AS A PRIMARY STRATEGIC OBJECT TECHNOLOGY Date: 25 Jun 1994 13:49:29 -0400 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Karen Logsdon NeXT Computer, Inc. 415-780-3786 or Chuck Malkiel Digital Equipment Corporation 508-493-4164 or Bob Price Digital Equipment Corporation 508-493-4297 DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION CHOOSES OPENSTEP AS A PRIMARY STRATEGIC OBJECT TECHNOLOGY Digital to port OpenStep software to DEC OSF/1 AXP SAN FRANCISCO-June 21, 1994-Digital Equipment Corporation and NeXT Computer, Inc., today announced that Digital has chosen OpenStep as a primary strategic object technology. Digital will port NeXT's OpenStep software to its DEC OSF/1 operating system on Alpha AXP, making it a strategic object-oriented environment for application development. OpenStep will be integrated with Digital's ObjectBroker and distributed by Digital. OpenStep is NeXT's proposed industry standard for an operating system independent, object-oriented application layer which can run on a variety of host operating systems. Applications written on top of OpenStep are portable across all OpenStep implementations, regardless of the underlying operating system. Sun Microsystems, Inc., and Hewlett-Packard Company have already committed to products based on OpenStep. "Digital has evaluated object-oriented technology shipping today and on the horizon and Digital has chosen NeXT. OpenStep will play a strategic role for Digital, allowing us to offer customers this premier technology on our high performance Alpha AXP desktop systems," said Enrico Pesatori, vice president and general manager for Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Business Unit. "OpenStep on Alpha AXP is a key component to our object-oriented product strategy and provides Digital customers with the foundation for complete client/server software solutions based on NeXT technology, including NEXTSTEP for Intel on the client side and Portable Distribute Objects (PDO) and NetInfo running on our UNIX-based servers." "With Digital, Sun and Hewlett-Packard basing products on OpenStep, it is poised to become the industry standard for object-oriented computing," said Steven P. Jobs, chairman and CEO of NeXT Computer, Inc. "NeXT is providing the leading edge object-oriented technology which provides unprecedented levels of application portability between Intel and RISC-based systems. >From the desktop to the server, Digital's leadership in the UNIX marketplace makes them an excellent provider of OpenStep and NEXTSTEP technology for the enterprise." The Digital-NeXT Client/Server Solution With the completion of porting OpenStep to DEC OSF/1, Digital will provide a full suite of applications similar to those in NEXTSTEP 3.2, including the Workspace Manager, NeXTmail, as well as NEXTSTEP Developer. For application developers, this means that applications written to the OpenStep API are source-code compatible with any version of OpenStep. OpenStep provides a common object-oriented framework across Intel, PA-RISC, SPARC, Alpha AXP and PowerPC-based systems, creating a large market for software developers and minimizing platform dependencies. Digital also plans to integrate OpenStep with ObjectBroker, its CORBA-compliant distributed object system which is the foundation for Digital's Common Object Model (COM) implementation. This integration will allow any object managed by ObjectBroker to interact with objects in the NeXT environment. ObjectBroker is shipping today on Windows, Windows NT, Macintosh, DEC OSF/1, ULTRIX, SunOS, HP-UX and AIX servers. On the desktop, NEXTSTEP for Intel processors is currently shipping on Digital's LPx, MTE and XL personal computers. For the server, NeXT is currently shipping NetInfo for OSF/1, the network-based framework for administering large networks without the overhead, delay and inconsistencies created by other network administration tools. By the end of the year, NeXT will be shipping PDO (Portable Distributed Objects) for Alpha AXP servers. PDO extends the same seamless object model and messaging architecture found in the native NEXTSTEP operating environment to standard UNIX based servers, including Digital's UNIX. About Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation is the world's leader in open client/server solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide information systems. Digital's scalable Alpha AXP platforms, storage, networking, software and services, together with industry-focused solutions from business partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global marketplace. About NeXT Computer, Inc. NeXT Computer, Inc. develops and markets the award-winning NEXTSTEP object-oriented software for industry-standard computer architectures. Customers use NEXTSTEP's advanced object environment to rapidly develop and deploy custom, enterprise-wide, client/server applications. NeXT is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and has offices in North America, London, Paris, Munich and Tokyo. # # # # Note to Editors: Digital, the Digital logo, Alpha AXP, DEC, DECpc, ObjectBroker, and ULTRIX are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. NeXT, the NeXT logo, NEXTSTEP, PDO and Portable Distributed Objects are registered trademarks of NeXT Computer, Inc. Intel is a trademark of Intel Corporation. OSF/1 is a registered trademark of the Open Software Foundation, Inc. Windows is a trademark and Windows NT is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Sun Microsystems and SPARC are registered trademarks and SunOS is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Hewlett-Packard and HP-UX are registered trademarks Hewlett-Packard Company. UNIX is a registered trademark licensed exclusively in the U.S. and other countries by X/Open Company, Ltd. Other trademarks mentioned belong to their respective owners.