PMDF V4.3 Now Faster Than Ever with Extended PC Mail Support

New Release of First MIME-based E-mail System Expanded to   Embrace New
Platforms and Extend New Functionality 

April 11, 1994 -- WEST COVINA, Calif. -- Innosoft International, Inc.,
today announced that PMDF V4.3, the newest release of Innosoft's
store-and-forward electronic mail routing system, has begun volume
shipping to customers. Included in the new release of Innosoft's
MIME-based e-mail solution for Digital Equipment Corporation computer
users is a wide range of new features, including support for the Pine
e-mail user agent, a new channel for WordPerfect Office, support for NeXT
Mail, new e-mail-to-FAX support for Service Class 2 modems, and much more.
Native support for Digital Equipment's Alpha AXP platform and new
multi-threading support also give PMDF faster performance than ever
before. 

"There are a number of interesting features that have been incorporated
into PMDF V4.3, but there are two trends particularly worth noting: 1)
that we have continued to extend support to integrate PC-based e-mail into
the enterprise, and 2) that the performance and versatility of PMDF
continues to improve," noted Kevin Carosso, Engineering Vice President of
Innosoft International. "With the added direct support channel for
WordPerfect Office 4.0, yet another PC LAN-based mail system can be
integrated into enterprise-wide e-mail via PMDF. And taking advantage of
native Alpha AXP code gives PMDF unparalleled performance on Digital's
RISC platform. Furthermore, the PMDF core is now thread-safe, to take
advantage of the multi-threaded programming support in OpenVMS that has
become so popular on other computing platforms such as OSF/1, OS/2, and
Windows NT. The improvements in functionality and performance in PMDF V4.3
continue to show our customers that we are committed to providing them
with state-of-the-art e-mail solutions." 

PC Mail System Integration Capabilities Expanded and Strengthened 

In addition to the direct support channels for cc:Mail and Novell MHS-based
mail systems such as DaVinci and BeyondMail that are already supported,
PMDF V4.3 now adds a similar direct channel to support WordPerfect Office
4.0. PMDF provides seamless integration for each of these three PC mail
systems, bringing PC users into the enterprise backbone without requiring
separate e-mail gateway products. Users on any of these systems can
exchange mail with each other, as well as with users on the many other
e-mail environments supported by PMDF, including SMTP access to UNIX mail
and the Internet. 

In addition to direct support channels for cc:Mail, Novell MHS, and
WordPerfect Office, PMDF products continue to provide interconnections to
other mailers such as Microsoft Mail and QuickMail through various gateway
products used to link these mail systems to SMTP, X.400, or MHS-based
systems. With PMDF V4.3, support has been added for many of the
non-standard features of some of these gateways. Through a combination of
direct channels and/or customized gateway support, PMDF is able to
integrate every major mail system into the enterprise backbone with
complete transparency to individual users on each mail system. 

User-Friendly Pine MAIL Now Available on OpenVMS 

In response to customer requests for a menu-driven user agent with a look
and feel more like other applications typically used by the PC community,
Innosoft has added Pine MAIL to PMDF V4.3. The original Pine is a
MIME-aware user agent developed by the University of Washington that has
gained great popularity among PC and UNIX users. With Pine MAIL added to
PMDF, Pine is now available on OpenVMS so mail system managers will be
able to offer a choice of command-line or menu-driven user agents to their
current users, as well as encourage additional new e-mail users since Pine
MAIL has a comfortable look and feel and an on-line help facility. And
since both PMDF and Pine MAIL support MIME, the Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions standard (RFC 1521), users still can take advantage of full
multimedia support, sending binary files, PostScript files, images, audio,
and video in addition to plain text as multipart, multiple format
electronic mail.  

Using MIME as a standard canonical format also enables PMDF to be
engineered to deal with non-standard formats from other environments, such
as NeXT Mail. In PMDF V4.3, the capability has been added to recognize the
non-standard NeXT Mail formats and then convert them to MIME for
processing and routing. 

PMDF Is Faster than Ever 

With the release of V4.3, PMDF's core infrastructure has been made
thread-safe. This will allow new PMDF components to take advantage of
multiple threads of execution for improved efficiency when dealing with
simultaneous requests from multiple clients.  

PMDF performance has more than doubled on Digital Alpha AXP hardware.
Rather than running as translated code, PMDF has been recompiled as native
code for the Alpha platform to deliver twice the speed in handling e-mail.


Decentralizing PMDF files has also increased performance. In previous
releases, the various PMDF files had to reside on a single disk so, in
environments handling large amounts of e-mail traffic, e-mail performance
was limited by the speed of the disk. Now PMDF files can be relocated to
multiple disks and the application files can be loaded on one disk while
another disk can be designated to store messages and a third can be set up
for log files. 

New Features in PMDF-FAX V4.3 

Enhancements have also been added to PMDF-FAX V4.3, Innosoft's
e-mail-to-FAX gateway. PMDF-FAX now supports selected Service Class 2
modems, specifically the ZyXEL U1496 and the MultiTech 1432 series modems.
Support for additional Class 2 modems will be added in the future, as
dictated by customer demand.  

The PostScript interpreter in PMDF-FAX has been upgraded to support Level 2
PostScript. PMDF-FAX now uses a pre-compiled initialization file to reduce
the time required to create an image for an outbound FAX. In addition,
PMDF-FAX can now output Level 2 PostScript to support more efficient
encoding of received images. In fact, typical Level 2 PostScript output is
now 15 to 20 times smaller that Level 1 output, so Level 2 images are much
faster and more efficient to handle for transmission and printer output. 

"In addition to tracking open messaging standards and making sure that PMDF
is current with those continuously evolving standards, we are committed to
delivering enhancements that make our PMDF products more efficient and
user-friendly" added Carosso. "That's why, with the release of PMDF
Version 4.3, we have added support for such things as Level 2 PostScript
and MIME-aware PMDF Pine MAIL. We have also upgraded MIME support in PMDF
to reflect the current standard, specifically support for international
character sets in MIME message headers. Like all technology, e-mail is
evolving, and we want to assure our customers that PMDF will continue to
evolve as well to meet their needs." 

Innosoft currently offers a family of electronic mail products for the DEC
market; including PMDF e-Mail Interconnect, an electronic mail
distribution and routing system that provides e-mail integration services
for OpenVMS; PMDF-X400, a direct link between OpenVMS and X.400
environments; PMDF-MR, a Message Router gateway to support DEC's MAILbus
products; and PMDF-FAX, an electronic mail-to-FAX gateway. 

All PMDF family products are licensed by full-service subscriptions that
include software, documentation, new releases during the subscription
period, and technical support. Subscription terms range from three to five
years for new subscribers, from two to five years for prior customers
reactivating subscriptions, and from one to five years for current
subscribers renewing or adding products. PMDF e-Mail Interconnect is
licensed in "bundles" based upon the number and size of CPUs at the site
to run PMDF. A bundle can handle one large machine (6000 series or
larger), three medium machines (3000 or 4000 class), or ten workstations.
VAX and Alpha AXP machines can be commingled in the same bundle license.
The three-year license fee for the first bundle of PMDF at each site is
$2,790, with subsequent bundles at $1,395 each. PMDF-X400, PMDF-MR, and
PMDF-FAX run in conjunction with PMDF e-Mail Interconnect, and are
licensed per machine at $5,850 for a three-year subscription for
PMDF-X400, and $4,065 for PMDF-MR or PMDF-FAX. Accredited, degree-granting
institutions are eligible for a 33-percent educational discount on all
PMDF software products. Contact Innosoft for customized quotations for
large single sites or multiple sites to be licensed for a single
organization. 

Innosoft's electronic mail products are marketed directly to end users by
Innosoft in North America, and are available throughout Europe, New
Zealand, Australia, and Japan through a network of international
distributors. PMDF products are presently installed at more than 1,400
sites in 42 countries throughout the world. The company's new headquarters
is at 1050 East Garvey Avenue South, West Covina, CA 91790; telephone
(818) 919-3600; FAX (818) 919-3614. The company's toll-free number is
still (800) 552-5444. 

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