IONA Technologies II0P Engine Establishes True Consumer Device Connectivity
OBJECT WORLD EAST, BOSTON — March 5, 1997 — IONA Technologies (Nasdaq: IONAY), a leader in Common Object Request Broker (CORBA) Internet technology is today announcing the availability of the Orbix IIOP engine. The engine facilitates the creation of IIOP (Internet Inter-Orb Protocol) enabled applications running on the new generation of consumer devices such as personal digital assistants (PDA), office equipment, mobile communications devices and embedded control systems, while providing key standards-based connectivity to backend control and management applications with CORBA. This bi-directional support for IIOP provides developers with the tools to build compelling embedded applications.
IIOP, an accepted standard for communication between objects over the Internet, is an integral part of the CORBA standard, however, there are deployment environments where basic IIOP capability as opposed to the full Object Request Broker (ORB) functionality is appropriate. These would typically include embedded environments with tight memory constraints. The IIOP Engine provides the technology to enable the integration of such devices with CORBA-based distributed systems, thus providing key standards-based connectivity from the Mainframe to office equipment and PDAs.
"We want to give our customers the freedom and flexibility to choose the technologies which best suit their organizations' needs," commented Annrai O'Toole, CTO at IONA Technologies. "The IIOP engine brings the power and flexibility of CORBA and IIOP to environments which by their nature have severe memory constraints. The IIOP engine is the final piece of the IIOP jig-saw. We can now offer our customers full IIOP connectivity on MVS, UNIX, Windows, Java and real-time embedded systems. This complete IIOP picture marks the arrival of a complete IIOP solution. The question now is not what components and platforms to use but what IIOP application do you want to build today?"
The lightweight nature of the IIOP Engine (sub 16K) also paves the way for the IIOP-enabling of downloadable controls such as Microsoft's ActiveX. This gives rise to a whole new generation of so-called "IIOP-Xs," with the power to communicate with both Microsoft COM DCOM and CORBA-conformant components and services.
IONA is currently porting the IIOP engine to Microsoft's new hand held operating system Windows CE, enabling CE users to access CORBA applications built on MVS, UNIX and Windows on their palm-top. The IIOP engine provides similar functionality for engineers working with real-time operating systems — such as VxWorks, pSOS and QNX.
Availability
The II0P engine is currently available on Sun Solaris and Windows NT. For more information on pricing and specific platform availability please contact [email protected].
IONA Technologies was formed in 1991 and launched its first product, Orbix in July 1993. Orbix is an implementation of the Object Management Group's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) specification. This technology offers a standard way for corporate developers to develop distributed, client/server software applications.
Orbix currently runs on over 15 operating systems from a single code base. Platforms include: Windows NT, Windows 95, OS/2, Macintosh System 7.5, several different UNIX systems, MVS and significant real-time operating systems including pSOS, VxWorks and QNX. Orbix for Windows allows ActiveX and OLE- enabled applications to transparently invoke remote and local CORBA objects. Orbix supports a wide range of languages including: C++, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, Delphi, Java, Ada95 and Smalltalk.
Orbix is used by thousands of developers worldwide in large and small corporations. Reviewers, editors and other industry-knowledgeable judges at UNIX Review magazine picked Orbix as one of the outstanding products of 1995.
NOTE: Orbix is a registered trademark of IONA Technologies. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners
Internet: http://www.iona.com
Information: [email protected]
SOURCE: IONA Technologies Inc.
CONTACT:
Tom Murphy of IONA Technologies, 617-949-9000 or E-mail: [email protected]