Unix Expo Attracts Large Net Contingency

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NEW YORK -- Internet Village and a kickoff session on the infobahn failed to inspire a ho-hum Unix Expo at New York's Javits Center Oct. 4 to 6, although Washington, D.C.-based companies called the event worthwhile. The number of exhibitors -- about 350 counting user groups, body-shops and trade periodicals -- fell well short of the 425 forecast by the show's promoters, who were fielding their 11th event.

A kickoff keynote panel on the Internet as Unix's long-sought killer application failed to hold the audience with moderator Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly and Associates, and panelists Ed Krol, a columnist; entrepreneur Mario Morino, founder of the Morino Institute; and Steve Tomlin, vice president of QVC-Interactive.

NEW YORK -- Internet Village and a kickoff session on the infobahn failed to inspire a ho-hum Unix Expo at New York's Javits Center Oct. 4 to 6, although Washington, D.C.-based companies called the event worthwhile. The number of exhibitors -- about 350 counting user groups, body-shops and trade periodicals -- fell well short of the 425 forecast by the show's promoters, who were fielding their 11th event.

Faring slightly better was Oracle President and CEO Larry Ellison, the Wednesday keynote speaker, whose presentation on parallel software turned out to be an hour-long tutorial on a $300 set-top box system, already deployed in the United Kingdom, that represents Oracle's bid for consumer markets for its media server. "This is not a faked demonstration," Ellison twice admonished the audience, which was kept waiting for 25 minutes while Javits Center staff said he rehearsed.

Rumornet went online during the show over Motorola's announcement of plans to enter the personal computer market, with speculation that the Schaumberg, Ill. company would buy Apple, its PowerPC chip partner, rather than take advantage of the newly available opportunity to manufacture Mac system clones. Countervailing opinion held out for the third PowerPC partner, IBM, as a more likely Apple acquisitor.

Rumornet also dismissed a well-hyped joint announcement by Novell, Magna Software and Transarc of the "second generation" of client/server computing, featuring "three tier architecture," as hierarchy rather than performance.

Internet Village featured 37 exhibitors, five from the Netplex, with Reston, Va.'s Advanced Network &amp Services Inc., which furnished network services for Internet Village's E-mail Green, boasting the mini-expo's largest booth. ANS's InterLock service, a gateway firewall, is due to ship Nov. 1. The company already is deploying its InterLock forwarder for browser tools that access the World Wide Web.

Performance Systems International of Herndon, Va., promoted Pioneer Preference pricing through the end of the year for its PSI InterRamp internet access tool for Mac, PC and Unix platforms.

UUNet Technologies of Falls Church, Va., featured its AlterNet menu, including a six-month package of services and equipment for the mid-sized business for about $5,000.

Mainstream exhibitors included Network Imaging Corp. of Herndon, Va., which introduced Infostore, an application-independent family of storage management software already deployed in Europe by NIC's Dorotech subsidiary in Paris; and StorCom, a SPARC-based storage management controller for intelligent networks from NIC's newly acquired IBZ subsidiary in Frankfurt.

AIB Software of Dulles, Va., introduced Sentinel II, a memory error detection tool, based on its platform independent Object Module Transformation tech.

Other exhibitors include Raxco's Axent Technologies of Rockville, Md.; Cucumber Information Services of Rockville, Md.; Empress Software of Greenbelt, Md.; Group 1 Software of Lanham, Md.; InterCon Systems Corp. of Herndon, Va.; the Bellevue, Wash., division of Legent; Metron Systems of Rockville, Md.; Performix of McLean, Va.; and W. Quinn Associates of Reston, Va.


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