Included in my activities over the past two months was participation in the "Upcoming Events" that were listed in the August newsletter. This report provides short descriptions of the events, what was learned from those I talked with and some conclusions and recommendations.

I took the opportunity at these events and meetings to communicate the following key Salutation messages;

1. Information appliances are taking advantage of the functionality offered by the Salutation Architecture, e.g., Salutation enabled products are arriving in the world market.

2. The consortium is promoting the Salutation Architecture to application developers building office solutions, e.g., Releasing the Port of Entry RFI that will encourage developers to enable their applications.

3. Salutation is driven by trends in Internet/intranet and web communications, which accentuate the market expectation for device interoperability.

Here are the events in chronological order.

Dataquest - Document Management Conference, August 5-6 in Chicago

This Dataquest conference, with its focus on document management and industry trends, attracts many device manufacturers, software developers, related vendors and end user organizations. The two information packed days provided attendees with vital information they need to; exploit the latest technology breakthroughs, market their products more profitably, anticipate and leverage the dynamic interrelationships between today's key market segments - printers, copiers, faxes and multifunctional. One important message from the conference was very clear. The impact of the Internet, networking and collaborative applications on future success. The conference provided excellent access to Dataquest and other analysts, as well as corporate contacts important to Salutation.

Press Tour - New York and Boston areas, September 8-12.

This concentrated round of interviews, which were arranged by Leslie Schroeder Public Relations and Marketing, gave me the opportunity to inform and educate key analysts and editors. We used an interview format that allowed me to give individualized presentations, elicit questions and responses, and develop relationships that will promote future contacts. Interviews were held with representatives from the following organizations: Byte Magazine, CAP Ventures, EMMS (Electronic Mail & Messaging Systems), Gartner Group, Hard Copy Observer, International Data, InternetWeek, Peripheral Insights.

The successful interviews with analysts showed a growing buy-in for Salutation concepts. We are beginning to see analysts aid in Salutation recruitment through introductions and referrals. News media were supportive of the Port of Entry RFI and saw it as a significant addition to Salutation. They all were impressed with the array of Salutation enabled products that were announced in Japan, but all asked the question, when can we expect to see these and other products announced in the US and Europe.

CAP Ventures - Converging Digital Peripherals Conference, September 11-12 in Boston

This is an annual event sponsored by CAP Ventures and the only conference that examines the entire scope of office peripherals. The Salutation member companies were well represented in the attendee list. The presentations included; The Digital Office, What's Happening to the Single Function Copier, Fax, Scanner Markets in a System Environment, and What Will it Take to Make the Analog to Digital Transition. As these topics and the name of this conference imply, the lines separating the functions and usage of varied types of office peripherals are getting very blurred. Therefore, the need to locate, control and utilize the capabilities of these devices in the today's networked environments is critical to their market differentiation and success. The answer is that Salutation addresses many of the network connectivity requirements for these devices.

This conference also provided the opportunities to respond to questions and requests for information from companies interested in possible membership, including developers and large a end user organization.

Fax Directions '97 Conference, September 15-16 in San Diego

This was the first annual Fax Directions Conference, sponsored by Davidson Consulting. This three day conference dedicated to the fax market defined status, directions, challenges, and opportunities for all those organizations that participate in this space. Here again, many of the Salutation member companies were represented at this conference by their development and/or marketing staffs. The main message from the conference was that the fax machine is still very much alive and the fax market continues to grow. Many of the presentations and discussions centered around the enhanced fax technologies, i.e., color, the Internet and improved software for managing faxes and servers. A key presentation dealt with how to integrate standard fax machines with corporate networks and managing the fax process.

I had the opportunity to participate on a panel that presented and discussed, "Where Does the Fax Go from Here?" I explained how Salutation enabled faxes can provide availability of improved functionality, utilization, and interoperability on the network. Along these lines, I made contact with nonmember company attendees that develop faxes or related software that were interested in learning more about how Salutation can benefit their products.

In each issue, this section of the Salutation Newsletter will highlight potential uses for the Salutation Architecture. We aim to prod your thinking as you visualize how Salutation might benefit your business. First we'll describe how someone might use Salutation-enabled products and services to solve a problem, then we'll take the covers off and show you how Salutation technology made the scenario possible.

Network Plug and Play

The promise of getting new office equipment and simply plugging it into a network port has been documented for years. But have you ever seen it work? You need the LAN administrator to build a directory record for the device, notify all users of its existence, load device driver in user's desk top environments, assign security codes, and so on.

Wouldn't it be great if the Getting Started manual for your new multi-function office machine simply read, "Position the unit in a convenient location and plug the power cord into the power outlet. Plug the LAN cable in to the LAN access port. Turn on the power switch."

You guessed it, Salutation Architecture can do this for you.

Salutation Behind the Scenes

1. When turned on, the multi-function device uses the Salutation Exchange SLM-ID protocol sequence to locate the other Salutation enabled devices on the network. This is also a signal to the Salutation enabled LAN Administration software that a new device has entered the network.

2. The LAN Administration software issues a Query Capabilities protocol sequence to the newly attached device. In response, our new multi-function device returns a series of Functional Unit Description Records detailing the Print, Document Storage and Fax capabilities it contains. As part of this exchange, the device specifies its 'public' security code.

3. The LAN Administration software then builds directory records associated with the new device and its functionality. (This has been demonstrated for the Novell Directory Service using existing NDS APIs.)

4. The LAN Administration software determines the location of device drivers for the new device. (They may be maintained in a LAN accessable database, in archival storage, on a Web or FTP server or maintained in storage on the device itself.) Once located, the LAN Administration software readies them for delivery to requesting users.

5. Users locate the new equipment either through traditional directory queries, or Salutation queries. For example, users may request a device having special characteristics using the Salutation APIs exposed in the Salutation Port-of-Entry (see Salutation News in this issue). If our new device matches the requirements specified by the user's request, it will respond positively. In a more traditional manner, the user may use directory queries to determine the availability of our new device. In either case, the user's system recognizes that this device is new and searches the local, then LAN environment for the appropriate device driver.

6. Again, using the Salutation Port-of-Entry contained in the desk top environment, the user communicates with the device through a Salutation Service request using a secure transmission based on the device's public key.

The forth in a series by Robert A. Pascoe, former president of the Salutation Consortium. Pascoe now operates Senior Technical Staff, a consulting firm focusing on interconnection technologies and interworking.

Remember MEGATRENDS, a 1982 best selling book by John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene which posted prophecies for the decade to come? The authors described ten major shifts in social, economic, political and technological trends, with the premise that these shifts would have wide ranging effects on our lives. We have been reviewing these trends to see if the authors' visions have come to pass and what it has meant to our life and lifestyle today. In this issue of Greetings we will take a look at the sixth and seventh trends:

6. Institutional Help to Self-Help

7. Representative Democracy to Participatory Democracy

6. Institutional Help to Self-Help

The Trend: Megatrends foresaw that people would rely less on the government, schools, and traditional medical treatment facilities. Much of this trend would be caused by the failure of the institutions to fulfill the needs of business, industry, and individuals. Instead, business and industry would provide workers with the training that the public school systems had failed to deliver, and government would reinvent themselves as social programs went bankrupt.

Today: The health insurance industry has taken the lead in self-help. By creating managed care and health maintenance organizations they seek to control their own destiny through controlling the explosive growth of health care costs. Business has invented the adopt-a-school program to form partnerships with public schools as a means of improving the educational experience of their future workers. Government continues to struggle with ways to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent.

In some aspects, Naisbitt and Aburdene predicted the 'me generation.' We have developed self-help groups on every topic, we have grown enamored with holistic medicine and herbal treatments, and we buy Us magazine. Taking charge of our own destiny, we have flooded mutual funds with cash to offset what appears to be the inevitable reduction in Social Security benefits. And one of the most active of the stocks targeted by investors is Home Depot, a do-it-yourself mega-store.

And we have been given access to one of the most useful self-help tools, the personal computer. This tool gives us access to CD-ROM encyclopedias, electronic medical dictionaries, math, reading and typing tutors, and the World Wide Web. And with search engines, chat rooms, on-line focus groups, and information filters, we can find the information we need at a moment's notice.

I don't expect this trend to slow any. The tools for foraging, finding, filtering, and fetching information will only get more powerful, easier to use and less expensive. Your choices of access channels for information will also increase. Cable companies will offer cable modems for high speed information access, telephone companies will branch out, offering information access and delivery services, and the electric utilities will offer energy management, appliance repair service, and security monitoring.

Salutation technologies are required to negotiate through the maze of information available for our use. At a minimum, Salutation's capability exchange will be necessary to negotiated sessions between the information provider and the output device to assure that the data transferred to the user can be visualized as meaningful information.

7. Representative Democracy to Participatory Democracy

The Trend: Rather than change the entire structure of government, the authors of Megatrends predicted that individuals would become pro-active in the democratic process. They suggested that education on issues and on the positions of the candidates for office might be a prerequisite for participating in any election.

Today: Two steps forward, one step back on this trend. C-SPAN provides us with access to debates on the issues, and provides us with glimpses of the performance of our elected officials. In the last few presidential elections, we have been presented with graphs, chart, and info-mercials designed to highlight issues and foster debate. Our elected officials have e-mail addresses providing us with an easy access, never before available. Our candidates show up on talk shows and MTV, and we are challenged to vote from a new information base.

But we also have the detractors of sound bytes and negative campaigning. As has been the case with past technology advances, learning to use the technology, or

manipulate it, provides great advantages. For example,

the lack of a little make-up may have contributed to the

outcome of the first televised presidential debate(Nixon/Kennedy- 1960). And although the Internet is providing an electronic forum for discussing the issues of today (over 11,000 "infoseek" hits on the words Democrat and Republican), more is not necessarily better. As observed earlier, "We are drowning in information and starved for knowledge." The requirement we consumers must present to the technologists is to provide higher function, user friendly information filters, allowing access to debates on the issues that effect us individually.

The Salutation Architecture provides a simple, light-weight API set for accessing the Salutation functions. These APIs fall into 5 categories:

Initialization: There are two APIs for initialization of the Salutation Manager that receives and acts on the API calls. They are

• smlGetVersion(): Returns the Version Number of the Salutation Manager
• slmGetlocalSLMID(): Returns the ID for the local Salutation Manager. This ID is used in subsequent API calls.

Registration: There are two APIs for maintaining Functional Unit Registration. They are:

• slmRegisterCapabilities(): Allows user to register a local Functional Unit with the Salutation Manager. Other Salutation Managers will be able to 'see' this Functional Unit and learn about its capabilities.
• slmUnregisterCapabilities(): Allows the user to unregister a Functional Unit that was previously registered with the Salutation Manager. This effectively takes the Functional Unit 'off-line'.

Query: There are two APIs for locating other Salutation Managers and determining the Functional Units registered there. They are:

• slmSearchCapability(): Locates other Salutation Managers having specific Functional Units.
• SlmQueryCapability(): Determines if a Functional Unit supports a specific set of Capabilities.

Availability: There are two APIs for determining if a Functional Unit is available. They are:

• slmStartAvailabilityCheck(): Check the availability of a specific Functional Unit at a specified frequency.
• SlmCancelAvailabilityCheck(): Stop a previously started availability check.

Service: There are three APIs which control the movement of data between Salutation enabled entities. They are:

• slmOpenService(): Creates a virtual, bi-directional data pipe between the calling entity and a Function Unit specified in the call.
• SlmTransferData(): Places data on the data pipe form the calling entity to the specified Functional Unit.
• SlmCloseService(): Closes a virtual data pipe set up by the slmOpenService call.