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****************************** WarpCast ******************************
Source: Simon Gronlund (simgron@ibm.net)
Moderator: Christopher B. Wright (wrightc@dtcweb.com)
**********************************************************************
 
Hi,

Jeff Smith, IBM, recently visited Stockholm, 
Sweden, and this is a short summary of the 
day they held here:

By Bjorn Soderstrom

(MODERATOR'S NOTE: Apologies if the name was spelled incorrectly.
Our moderation forum was unable to translate the international
characters correctly.)
                                       
15 Oct 1998

A slight movement is taking place around the 
coming version of Warp Server for 
e-business, which will be released during Q1 
next year. The IBM-man Jeff Smith, Director 
of OS/2 Business Line and Network Computing 
Software, recently was in Sweden and talked 
about what OS/2 users are to expect in the 
future. (Swedish OS/2 User Group was of 
course invited)

The never-ending question is if OS/2 is 
discontinued or at a write-off. Due to Mr 
Smith it's not only a hackneyed question, 
but wrongly formulated. On the contrary, 
OS/2 is still one of the IBM strategic 
products, and will in the future be used as 
a kernel to help customers transform the 
traditional client-server model, toward what 
IBM is calling Network Centric Computing.

One of the worst aspects today with IT in 
it's traditional role, is that it for many 
companies now is too expensive to keep up 
with the incessant upgrades, both on 
hardware and software. Furthermore, this is 
very seldom resulting in any increased 
productivity, due to too much money and time 
spent on training and support, not on the 
business.

Another aspect of this topic is that many 
companies don't have important data in the 
clients anymore but at the network, stored 
in databases, using intranets etc. In pace 
with better possibilities to increase 
bandwidth and speed for communication, the 
way lies open to run the business with the 
new old-styled model, using thin clients, or 
perhaps terminals, relying on powerful and 
optimized servers.

According to Mr Smith it's soon time for 
those small applications, which may be 
written in Java, downloaded through the 
Internet and maybe are stored at the server, 
to take over from the now clumsy and often 
unnecessary office suites. IBM already have, 
and will continue to expend tremendous 
efforts and money, to bring Java that 
crossplatform and free language as a huge 
part of the computer world wants.

Another very big obstacle for many 
organizations are the proprietary file 
formats of today, where organizations wants 
to be able to cooperate around documents, 
when the very business system demands these 
to be accessable from different platforms. 
And to be both read- and writeable from more 
than one platform.

In the market surveys of their own, IBM have 
seen that their OS/2 customers would rather 
not abandon OS/2, partly because their large 
investments and partly because they once 
choose it by reasons as stability, splendid 
network support etc. Earlier efforts by IBM 
to make OS/2 a common desktop system haven't 
been too succesful. In this position it have 
been natural taking customer demands 
seriously and to use the best out of OS/2, 
the technical parts, and continue to develop 
partly a new and very extensive version of 
Warp Server, and partly the rather new 
product WorkSpace on Demand.

Using these two corner-stones, OS/2 users 
can rely on experienced technique and grow 
into something new and a much more modern 
way of using IT, than with the traditional 
client-server model.

The new parts in Warp Server is the I/O 
handling which is heavily rebuilt, all parts 
of old 16-bit code shall be removed, and the 
new file system is borrowed from the IBM 
AIX, that is UNIX. Journaled File System 
provides completely different administration 
possibilities than the PC-systems do. Using 
the function Logical Volume Manager the 
administrator can mount disk volymes over 
different physical disks, and furthermore    
allocate big files and libraries 
(catalogues) over different disks. It's 
possible to plug in, take out, format and 
partition disks without need to take the 
server down, similar to what is possible 
with a RAID system.

Everything is of course 2000-ready and do 
have support for Euro -   - new 
administration tools which handles     
different NT 4 servers from one single OS/2 
domain, something any other product hardly 
is up to today. A completely new Web server 
is included, which is up to support the 
mixed number of thin clients and terminals 
connected to the server. The actual Java 
version is 1.1.6, but at release time you 
could count on version 1.1.8.

Another new thing will be more OS/2 
functions for the supervision framework, 
Tivoli. The server graphical interface look 
will mainly be taken from Warp 4.

All this is needed to provide a server as 
dependable as possible, especially as it 
with this philosofy becomes even more 
central than before. A network built with 
thin clients is principally useless as long 
as the server doesn't work. 

The year 2000 and Euro,  , support could 
save a lot of consulting money, which in the 
future will be an article in short supply. 
Instead of buying new desktop computers you 
could, by using WorkSpace of Demand (WSOD), 
use the stuff you have at hand. Install only 
the server part of WSOD and create hardware 
classes for the existing computers. Then 
create all the clients and give them the 
resources they need, for instance OS/2, 
Java, DOS, Window apps, WWW Browser or 
whatever needed for your business.

In this new version of WSOD, released by the 
end of October, it will be possible to use 
Win32 too, which wasn't possible before. You 
will be able to run common Win95 computers 
getting their Office from the server, 
similar to Citrix WinFrame. Thanks to the 
powerful server the users will notice no 
difference in performance, and safety will 
increase dramatically when the users won't 
be given any possiblity to spoil the 
pplications, as when using a common client. 

Another great advantage with WSOD is that 
every single user get "his/her desktop" 
whereever in the network they log on, due to 
every setting is downloaded from the server. 
If working from a different place than the 
common place, you will be given exactly the 
usual set of tools. This new version will 
support the IBM thin client - NC. And 
naturally you could continue using the 
existing OS/2 computers, and get access to, 
for instance, Office 97, if you might like 
that.

In this partly new situation, IBM is at 
first hand, no, longer looking at the 
common, so called, thick client of OS/2, 
that is Warp 4. "It will definitely not be 
discontinued", said Mr Smith, "but IBM will 
provide new features by Software Choice as 
up to now." IBM is spending a lot of money 
to get hardware support to OS/2, as new 
drivers, and there are no plans in ceasing 
that, according to Mr Smith. But on the 
other hand he sees no direct need for 
shrinkwrapped boxes with a new number 
printed on, when the customers at first hand 
wants new functionality in the existing 
environment, and to that there is better 
solutions than expensive upgrades at hand, 
Mr Smith finished.

Translated by 

Simon Gronlund (simgron@ibm.net)
Member of the Swedish OS/2 User Group (http://www.os2ug/)






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