Compatibility drives computer industry competition.

Plethora of software choices prompts further advances

For the computer industry in Los Angeles and across America, the 1980s were years of unprecedented innovation. Perhaps too much.

Customers were handed a cornucopia of software choices. Hardware's horsepower seemed to double every time you turned around. And buyers were repeatedly told there's a computer solution for every problem, and software readily works on any hardware.

The drive is for products that are designed and built with "open architecture," a compatibility that enables computer products to exchange data with foreign systems -- larger, smaller, different brand, etc. -- with much more ease. Great strides are being made to get the computer world either talking the same language or using translating software.

In 1992, most L.A. computer companies are somehow following the trend to devise "open" products, and some do little else.

* Santa Monica-based Retix is a good starting point. Its software line's sole task is to get incompatible computing systems to talk to each other. Attracting customers like Motorola Inc., Mitsubishi Cement and Merrill Lynch, Retix in the last five years has boosted revenues tenfold to $52 million. So the private company went public with a $35 million stock offering last year.

* West L.A.-based Candle Corp. is developing a family of software that will underpin its flagship Omegamon software line, making the latter far easier to adapt to different computer systems.

* Torrance-based Epson America Inc., the world's foremost manufacturer of printers for small computers, will unveil an extra-"open" printer in February or March, company officials said. Listing at about $2,100, the machine will serve up to three users at a time who are sending it orders from three dissimilar computers.

* Inglewood-based Locus Computing Corp. specializes in connecting dissimilar computer systems. All its work is based on UNIX, a basic-operations software that is closer than any to becoming the industry standard. Much "open" computer technology developed today aligns itself with the growing acceptance of the UNIX operating system.

* Los Angeles-based MacNeal-Schwendler Corp. plans to debut a major UNIX-related product in 1992. It's a version of its flagship software product that will run on a UNIX-using supercomputer made by Japan's NEC Corp. The MacNeal-Schwendler software is typically used by engineers and designers to analyze the strength, dynamic response and other characteristics of products prior to manufacturing.

In West L.A., Investors Business Daily bought a UNIX-based computer system last fall to manage its circulation data. The newspaper outgrew its old system, which couldn't keep personal history on subscribers, said Data Processing Manager Joe Loo. Running on Sun Microsystems-brand hardware, the UNIX operating system would be more compatible with future systems to be purchased for other company departments, namely advertising, accounting and telemarketing, he said.

Circulation has become a sophisticated art for publishers. For instance, Loo said, information on a reader's renewal rates, buying habits, susceptibility to telemarketing and other data will be computer cross-referenced by the 125,000-circulation daily. His circulation needs were formerly performed by a UNISYS mainframe computer. It also compiled the vast stock-market data that is published in different graphical formats for which the paper made a name for itself in the 1980s.

Loo said the option of designing new circulation software for the older mainframe was not cost-effective. "Rather than throw three or four programmers on it to create a new system, we wanted something off the shelf."

Being stuck with one "proprietary" supplier can be costly. Because good open systems are largely interchangeable, with some minor tinkering, they are inherently more competitive. They can sell for about 25 percent less, on average, compared with strictly proprietary systems, said data-processing consultant Walter Ulrich of Arthur D. Little Inc. in Los Angeles.

"I believe that in 1992 a critical mass of open systems products will be available, and it may well be the crossover point, where more procurement is done in open systems than for proprietary," he said.

Buying into open standards not only can solve the obvious, but also some sleepless nights. "Nobody ever got fired for pickin' IBM," noted Steve Hart, director of connectivity for computer-products distributor Merisel Inc., recalling the adage prevalent back when IBM was the uncontested standard-setter.

But engineers and some computer executives can quickly remind that the term "open" is subjective. Some new products ironically "are open but proprietary," cautioned an engineer who researches standards for a leading printer-maker. In other words, everyone is welcome to adopt my standard, designed to best suit my proprietary products.

Witness IBM and Apple Computer -- which began an historic joint venture last year. Aiming to create software and other technologies that would be happily adopted worldwide, they, not surprisingly, excluded others from the venture.

Despite the presence of competing standards, many Los Angeles-area companies will make pragmatic choices in 1992 to ally with the most promising standards.

Candle's new open software is envisioned almost as a translator. It would play a relay role between the operating system -- the master-control software that acts like a computer's traffic cop -- and Candle's application software, which offers choices and information to the user. The latter, called Omegamon, has been licensed to about 5,400 users to manage highly complex operating systems of IBM mainframes, the room-sized computers that keep things like national treasuries and navies running worldwide.

But Candle needs its Omegamon to branch further than IBM's gorilla computer to boost revenues much beyond the $150 million it did last year. Founder and Chief Executive Aubrey Chernick said he hired about 35 software developers to create the new open software to be compatible with a range of machines, from mainframes down to minicomputers and personal computers.

Chernick said Europe especially needs an open standard, thanks to its mishmash of American and European equipment. Europe, which accounted for 40 percent of Candle revenues last year, "is driving the open system model faster" than America, said Chernick.

Also during 1992, Candle will be developing software to manage the operating systems of another IBM workhorse, the AS/400 minicomputer. About 100,000 of these mid-size machines have been sold, commonly to small companies. Sales of about 35,000 are anticipated next year, providing a strong base for the Candle-IBM software product, which has yet to be named.

The AS/400s are often linked together by a business into a network. The Candle-IBM software, which would carry the IBM brand name, could be used by a computer operator in one city to study the health of an AS/400 in a different city, for instance.

Locus Computing Corp. has put all its eggs into the UNIX basket. All the Inglewood company's work is based on this operating system, from custom-designed software applications for a business user to a package that will be incorporated into another company's manufactured product.

One Locus product can connect a string of desktop computers, running on an IBM or Apple operating system, to a network running UNIX. The company has sold 250,000 copies of the software, called "PC-Interface."

Widely praised in the industry, UNIX is exceptional because it runs on all size computers, from desktop to mainframe. Developed by AT&T in the 1960s and 1970s, it is written in the "C" computer language, which is fairly well understood by a range of computer systems.

But several versions of UNIX have blossomed. Locus, like others, has tailored products to more than one UNIX version. No one is promising a convergence of competing versions, but many industry executives say it is likely.

"As more and more people adopt UNIX, and open systems becomes commonplace in the user community, that will cause there to be a drive for a unified version of UNIX," said Locus President and Chief Executive Martin Waters.

Until then, "the three flavors of UNIX are undoubtedly different," he said. While their subtle differences create a challenge for companies like Locus, they're merely "an annoyance" to the broad computer industry and not even evident to most end users at businesses, said Waters.