SAN JOSE, Calif., July 21, 1997 – The Salutation Consortium today announced that it is working with Hewlett-Packard Company, a member of the Consortium, on ways to support HP’s newly announced JetSend technology in the Salutation Architecture.
“We are identifying areas where integration of the two technologies will enhance user benefits,” said Robert J. Horton, Alliance Marketing Manager, HP Information Appliance Operation. “Users will be well served when these two technologies supplement and complement one another.”
“One of the early members of the Consortium, HP has demonstrated its commitment to developing technology that will simplify communications between a broad range of information appliances. JetSend is a major contribution to moving this vision forward,” said Robert F. Pecora, managing director of the Consortium.
Comparison of JetSend and Salutation
Salutation and JetSend are based on the common vision of enabling different types of equipment, including computers, office equipment, and home devices to interoperate. The Salutation Architecture sends a network query to determine the characteristics of a device, application or service, allowing fullest possible use of the characteristics discovered. JetSend is a device-to-device protocol that allows two devices to connect, negotiate data types, provide status updates, and exchange information. In enabled devices, both JetSend and Salutation work without user intervention.
Both approaches fit into today’s computing environment.
The Salutation Architecture supports a process to determine and make full use of unique features of a connected information appliance. For example, Salutation provides benefits in a directory centric environment. A directory service can maintain detailed information about connected appliances and assure that each device operates to its fullest capacity.
JetSend’s device-to-device protocol provides benefits where a directory-centric model does not apply. JetSend ensures that two information appliances can share one of a set of data types and allows the appliances to select the capabilities that will provide the highest available level of information exchange. In this way, JetSend ensures communication can take place between the devices.
Steps Toward Integration
As a first step toward providing users with an integrated approach, the Consortium, with HP’s assistance, will investigate adding a JetSend Functional Unit to the Salutation Architecture. The JetSend Functional Unit would allow a user to utilize the Salutation APIs and protocols to determine to the “JetSend capabilities” of an information appliance and adjust interactions based on the response. The Consortium will also investigate other approaches to integrating the two technologies. An initial checkpoint is scheduled for the Salutation Technical Subcommittee meeting in October.
About the Consortium
The Salutation Consortium has published an open specification that enables an application to locate a particular resource on a network through a broadcast query. The specification is independent of network transport, hardware platform, and operating system software and supports standard Internet and other message formats.
The Salutation Consortium is a non-profit corporation with member organizations in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Member companies include APTi, Axis Communications, Brother, Canon, Casio, Cisco, Eastman Kodak, Fuji Xerox, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, Integrated Systems, IBM, Iwatsu, Justsystem, Kobe Steel, Komatsu, Konica, Lexmark, Matsushita, Microware Systems, Minolta, Mita, Mitsubishi, Murata (Muratec), Novell, Oki Data, Ricoh, Rios Systems, Sanyo, Seiko Epson, Sharp, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba, WhetStone, and Xerox.