Network News.

TINA Standardisation to Continue at the OMG 

Following TINA-C's (Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium) recent decision to discontinue operation, the Object Management Group, which sets standards in distributed enterprise computing including telecommunications, has announced plans to continue the work of TINA-C within the OMG's vendor-neutral, platform-neutral technology adoption process.

TINA-C and many of its members were founding members of the OMG's Telecommunications Domain Task Force (TDTF). TINA-C has been active within that task force to ensure that OMG standards reflect the work dom. at TINA-C since its foundation. Since the OMG has well-defined and long-standing co-operation and liaison agreements with ISO, ITU-T, TMF and many other relevant standards organisations, them are established channels for sharing information on the work generated by the TDTF.

TINA has revolutionised the telecommunications industry with an object oriented (00) approach to revising the telcos'business practices - they initiated models and standards implementing the interfaces and protocols needed for the interoperable Internet era. As OMG is focused on 00 infrastructure for interoperability and integration, TINA and OMG have had an active, enduring liaison since TINA's inception. Indeed, many TINA members are also members of OMG. OMG's UML and CORBA have long been tools for progressing TINA's work.

"We have been working with the OMG for many years," said Hendrik Bemdt, CTO, TINA-C. "We have a lot of respect for the OMG's process and are delighted that TINA-C's work will live on under the auspices of the OMG."

A Place for Continuation of TINA-C's Standards Work

With this synergy, the TDTF is ideally suited for carrying on the telecommunications standardisation TINA-C has done over the years. There has already been extensive co-operation between the TDTF and TINA on a number of OMG telecom-specific standards, including Audio/Video Streams, Telecom Log Service, Notification Service, CORBA/TMN Interworking, Management of Event Domains and CORBA- FTAM/FTP. An added plus for the internet age is the fact that OMG's process is one of the most rapid in the industry, averaging between 8-18 months. www.omg.org and www.corba.org

Sybase iAnywhere Offers Wireless Hosting Service

ianywhere Solutions, Inc., a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc. (NASDAQ: SYBS), today unveiled its enterprise wireless ASP service which provides organisations with end-to-end, integrated wireless data solutions from system design and development to wireless hosting with one-stop customer management. This allows businesses to effectively overcome the complexities associated with development and wide-scale deployment of wireless data systems for faster time to market with reduced risk. With today's announcement `Sybase ianywhere Solutions is strongly positioned to develop new wireless e-business applications and opportunities. "Mobile and wireless technology is clearly an important part of enterprise computing, and corporations today are rapidly embracing mobile applications to improve business efficiency," said Terry Stepien, president of ianywhere Solutions. "By adding wireless hosting capabilities to our mobile technology we provide a one-stop, end- to-end source for enabling the `always available' enterprise."

As part of this service companies will benefit from:

* Industry- leading software including the highly scalable and secure iAnywhere Wireless Server and SQL Anywhere Studio

* Customised application design and development

* Wireless gateway connectivity for seamless integration with multiple wireless networks and mobile devices Hosted service with 24X7X365 monitoring and support.

www.sybase.com

Music on the Mobile

An agreement between Ericsson and SCM Microsystems will allow users to listen to MP3 files via their mobile phones and read and write audio files to the PC. Owners of Ericsson's Handsfree MP3 HPM-10 players for mobiles will be able to use SCM's MultiMedia Card (MMC) readers to store or transfer data from the phone to the PC. Music tracks can be copied from CDs or the Internet onto the multimedia card, which is then downloaded to the MP3 player via the card reader. This is said to be the first MP3 player on the market to be designed for use with a mobile phone and allows users to listen to music and take calls at the same time. The MMC Reader has a transfer rate of up to 900KB per second and works independently of the mobile phone. SCM will initially provide the card readers with a parallel port PC interface; a USB version of the card reader is planned for later this year. The Ericsson MP3 Handsfree is compatible with Ericsson T28, R320, R310 and A2618 mobile phones.

www.scmmicro.com

Optical Wireless Access for Far East

PAY Data Systems the UK's company which specialises in broadband optical wireless access systems, has opened its first sales office to service the Asian Pacific market. The office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia has been set up in response to the phenomenal growth of the Asian and Far Eastern broadband interact access and mobile phone markets, the regions' two highest growth sectors.

www.pavdata.com

Mobile Computing Solutions

Centura Software Corp., a provider of solutions that mobilise the enterprise and Symbol Technologies provider of mobile and wireless solutions for the mobile workforce, a partnership for the marketing and distribution of Centura's suite of end-to-end mobile computing solutions via Symbol's new Software e-Commerce Website (http://software.symbol.com). Through Symbol's Software Developer Partner programme the two companies will jointly allow customers to web- and wireless-enable their enterprise applications, extend these applications for use on handheld devices and store information on the devices using an embedded database tailored specifically for the operating system supported by the Symbol device.

Symbol's portal site (www.symobile.co) for the mobile computing and wireless industry is a gateway to Symbol's e-Commerce Website, which will provide access to Centura's suite of enterprise software solutions, related white papers, datasheets, press releases and success stories. Once there, customers will be able to purchase ESNAPP 2.0, Centura's Information Appliance connectivity server; Centura's Interface for SAP's R/3 system which enables applications to read, update and write data to the SAP R/3 system; the new db.star family of open-source, ultra-small footprint embeddable database solutions for information appliances; Centura's security solution with 128-bit Triple DES encryption; and CTD 2000, the premier development environment for building strategic, e-Business and mobile computing systems.

www.centursoft.com

Informix and Symbian enable applications for post-PC wireless

Symbian, provider for Wireless Information Devices (WIDs), and Informix Software, are to become a Partners. Informix has also ported its Cloudscape database to the Symbian platform to enable enterprise applications for users of Symbian-based Smartphones and Communicators. The Cloudscape technology offers third parties extended options to develop wireless enterprise solutions for the Symbiam platform enabling users of Symbian-based devices to have continuous access too data and corporate applications when disconnected from the network.

www.informix.com/uk

Indus River Passes VPN Ipsec Test

Indus River Networks, a developer of virtual private networking (VPN) solutions for remote access and site-to-site markets, says that its RiverWorks Enterprise VPN has passed the Virtual Private Network Consortium's (VPNC) latest IPSec conformance test. The first VPN vendor to pass this test of conformance to rekeying IPSec features, and receive the VPNC's certification.

The VPNC is a global forum for VPN vendors and serves as a resource for enterprises seeking to benefit from merging networking technologies. VPNC members include the industry's leading VPN vendors as well as other hardware and software manufacturers providing product evaluation and certification for the major VPN protocols: IPSec, L2TP over IPSee, and PPTP.

The VPNC's latest test focuses on advanced IPSee features of perfect forward secrecy (PFS) and automatic rekeying. Rekeying of IPSee security associations (SA) is a feature desired by enterprises that want extra security against attackers attempting to decrypt their traffic.

Rekeying and PFS minimise the amount of data that an attacker can decrypt if one key is compromised. For more information on the test, visit VPNC's web site at http:l/www.vpne.org/conformance.html.

StoneBeat FullCluster Awarded OPSEC Certification

Stonesoft Corp. provider of software-based, high network security and e-business solutions, says that its StoneBeat FullCluster has been awarded Check Point Technologies' Open Platform for Security (OPSEC) certification. Stonesoft's StoneBeat FullCluster is a clustering solution that addresses the issues critical to data security administrators: scalability, load balancing, fault tolerance, online maintenance and transparency. It interconnects multiple systems to form a scalable firewall cluster. Scaling up the cluster takes place online without interruption to network-operations. The system will automatically balance the load in such a way that no single firewall node is overloaded, also enabling load balancing of VPN tunnel connections.

www.stonebeat.com

Siemens Network for Liverpool University.

Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) has awarded Siemens Network Systems Limited (SNSL) with a contract worth 420,000 [pounds sterling] over 3 years to implement and manage a new network throughout the university campus. To meet the demands of staff and students, SNSL will introduce many new technologies to the LJMU network, such as Policy Based Networking (PBN), Quality of Service (QoS) and video streaming.

As the university has over 20,000 students and 2,000 staff throughout its four campuses, the current network is being heavily overloaded. The forthcoming implementation of PBN and QoS will ensure the optimum use of bandwidth available on the new network. Priority will be assigned to the important academic work of the university so that the movement of this data is not delayed by bandwidth congestion through nonessential use, such as recreational web surfing.

Another benefit of the new network will be the integration of CCTV, video streaming and a dedicated video server which will enable all lectures to be available throughout the LJMU campus via the intranet. Students will be able to access videoed lectures from an archive to help them with their revision.

www.snsl.com