SOMERS, N.Y., March 3, 1997. . .Express delivery of accurate business information from "hot" Internet appliances and PCs to destinations around the world is now closer to reality, thanks to IBM's latest endorsement of the Salutation Consortium's open protocol for locating and controlling Internet devices. New Win 95** and NT** versions of the IBM Salutation Manager software toolkit enable the majority of the world's PCs to more readily communicate with peripherals, office machines, applications and services across the Internet.
"We live in a mobile society that increasingly relies on hand-held computers, PDAs, pagers, cellular and digital phones and the Internet to do business," said Steve Mills, general manager, IBM Software Solutions. "Standards such as those developed by the Salutation Consortium, which facilitate capabilities exchange, ensure that information can go where you want it, when and how you want it, regardless of the information appliance you happen to be using."
The consortium, a 30+ member non-profit corporation, announced Salutation Architecture V2 in June 1996. The Salutation Architecture eases the exchange of information regarding Internet peripherals and devices, and is independent of network transport, hardware platform and operating system software. IBM endorsed the standards on the OS/2* and Win 3.1** platform last year; in January, the company introduced the industry's first commercial web-based LAN management product to take advantage of the open protocols. This software, NetCube NetFinity V1, is targeted initially at the Japanese market.
According to Mary Hill, managing director of the consortium, "IBM's Salutation Manager masks the complexity of Salutation protocols for the developer and makes it easy to add information-exchange features to office machines and other types of Internet appliances."
Licenses to implement the IBM Salutation Manager worldwide are available through Richard J. Osterman at [email protected]. Developers may also consult the Salutation Consortium's home page at http://www.salutation.org.
The Salutation Consortium membership includes APTi, Axis Communications, Brother, Canon, Casio, Eastman Kodak, Fuji Xerox, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, Integrated Systems, IBM, Iwatsu, JustSystems, Kobe Steel, Konica, Lexmark, Matsushita, Microware Systems, Minolta, Mita, Mitsubishi, Murata (Muratec), Novell, Oki Data, Ricoh, Rios Systems, Sanyo, Sieko Epson, Sharp, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba, and Xerox.
IBM offers complete information about the company, its products, services and technology to Internet users through the World Wide Web. The IBM home page is at www.ibm.com. The fastest, easiest way to get information about IBM Software is to go to the IBM Software home page at www.software.ibm.com. ###
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Contact:
Theo Chisholm
IBM Media Relations
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Margaret Bonilla
Brodeur Porter Novelli (for IBM)
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