Open Software Foundation Adds Ten Members

ANDOVER, Mass., Sept 28, 1988 -- PRNewswire -- The Open Software Foundation (OSF) today announced the addition of 10 organizations as new members of the international foundation. The announcement was made in conjunction with OSF's first membership meeting, being held in Andover, Massachusetts, today through Thursday.

OSF is the industry's first member-sponsored research and development organization aimed at bringing global acceptance to a single standard for open software. OSF is developing and will deliver within 15 to 21 months an open, standard operating system environment with extensions and subsystems, using core technology from a future version of IBM's AIX as a development base. OSF membership provides vendors and users with input into the development process and early access to specifications and code. A significant portion of the membership meeting will involve reviewing candidate technologies submitted by the industry for consideration as a standard graphical user interface for OSF's system.

The new member organizations are: 88open Consortium Ltd.; AdvancedMicro Devices; Booz, Allen & Hamilton Inc.; Micom Interlan; Norsk Data A.S.; Pacific Bell; Silicon Graphics Inc; Stanford University; The Swedish Telecom Group; and Wang Laboratories.

"These additions -- representing top academic, consulting, hardware, systems supplier and telecommunications interests -- demonstrate the commitment of major forces in the computer industry to developing a single, open operating system environment," said Henry Crouse, president of OSF. "The introduction of this expertise into our organization is particularly timely as we begin the selection of the graphical user interface. These new members, along with other OSF members and industry experts, will play an integral role in our technology selection process."

The 88open Consortium Ltd., located Wilsonville, Oregon, is a not-for-profit organization open to organizations and individuals who manufacture, develop, sell or use products based on the Motorola 88000 family architecture. Its charter is to promote timely implementation of standards for hardware and software interfaces to the 88000, to participate in standards-setting activities worldwide, and to influence future development of the 88000 product family.

Advanced Micro Devices(AMD), based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and one of the largest U.S. manufacturers of integrated circuits, produces microprocessors, memories, communications, graphics, networking and programmable logic devices.

Booz, Allen & Hamilton, located in Bethesda, Maryland, is an international technology and management consulting firm.

Micom Interlan, based in Boxborough, Mass., is a communications company specializing in Ethernet and token ring products. Micom develops hardware and software products, including TCP-IP, OSI, and DECnet protocols, that provide communications capabilities for DOS-, OS/2-, UNIX-, and VMS-based computers.

Norsk Data A.S., based in Oslo, Norway, develops and markets distributed resource systems that increase productivity and competitiveness. Systems are based on industry-standard PCs, local area networks and servers/minicomputers.

Pacific Bell, based in San Francisco, Calif., is a major telecommunications company providing local exchange and toll service, network access, and directory advertising to nearly 22 million people in California. As a leading-edge communications company, Pacific Bell is both a major provider, as well as a consumer, of information age technology.

Founded in 1981, Silicon Graphics, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of visual computing superworkstations that combine high-performance computing with real-time three dimensional graphics capabilities. Its workstations are used primarily by firms in the manufacturing, engineering, scientific, creative design and visual simulation markets.

Stanford University has an annual enrollment of 13,000 students, and awards 1,600 bachelor degrees and 2,700 graduate degrees annually. Stanford has 1,900 faculty and teaching staff, spread among seven schools, including Business, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Humanities and Sciences, Law and Medicine.

The Swedish Telecom Group, located in Farsta, Sweden, consists of the Swedish Telecommunications Administration, the operating company of the Swedish Telecom network, and its subsidiaries: Diab Data, the only manufacturer and the leading supplier of UNIX-based systems in Sweden; TeleLOGIC, addressing the area of software engineering productivity within the range of ADA/SDL/OSI- oriented CASE-products, jointly developed with its partner Telesoft in San Diego; and INFOLOGICS, developer of expert systems specialized for telecommunications applications and manufacturing.

Wang Laboratories Inc. is leading worldwide supplier of computer-based information processing systems including data, text, image and voice processing, as well as telecommunications and networking products. Founded in 1951, the company ranks 146th among the Fortune 500. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 1988, the company reported revenues of $3.068 billion.

OSF membership is available to computer hardware and software suppliers, educational institutions, government agencies, end users, and organizations around the world. Memberships are $25,000 a year for profit-making organizations and $5,000 a year for not-for-profit organizations. Members contribute ideas on both technical and policy matters, are informed of foundation activities on a regular basis, and receive numerous technical benefits and services relating to new product participation, including early and equal access to new development activities.

The formation of OSF was announced on May 17, 1988. The foundation has a management organization, staff, and a funding commitment in excess of $100 million over the next three years. Its initial development will be based on technologies offered by the industry and on its own worldwide research efforts. OSF's new headquarters will be located at Eleven Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Mass., effective November 1.

/CONTACT: Paula Slotkin of OSF, 508-683-6803; or Janice Brown of Hill & Knowlton, ATD, 617-642-5907 (office) or 617-965-1846 (home), for OSF/ DH-HW -- NE003 --