IBM Offers SOMobjects Free on the Web

Expanded platforms; new Internet support and services

NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 23, 1996 . . . At the IBM Technical Interchange '96
today, IBM announced that SOMobjects* Version 2.1 can now be downloaded
from the Internet at no charge, making it easier to develop and maintain
applications for network-centric computing environments. This powerful
programming tool allows applications to access and use software
components, even when they are written in different programming languages,
deployed on different operating-system platforms, or residing remotely in
host/client or client/server networks.

IBM also announced a new World Wide Web site for SOMobjects support and
information and the early availability of the next release of System
Object Model (SOM)* technology, SOM 3.0 for OS/2*. In addition to OS/2,
IBM is developing SOM 3.0 technology for a range of operating-system
environments, including AIX*, MVS*, OS/400*, Windows** 3.1, NT** and 95,
and other UNIX** systems. Tandem Computers Inc. and IBM also have an
agreement to port SOM 3.0 to Tandem platforms.

Through SOM technology, SOMobjects provides a highly efficient mechanism
for building, packaging, and manipulating class libraries of objects that
can be shared across applications. Development becomes easier because
SOMobjects provides a language-neutral programming environment and manages
local and remote communication among objects.

"The widespread availability of SOMobjects will enable more developers to
take advantage of standards-based SOM technology for creating and using
component software on the widest range of platforms," said Steve Mills,
general manager, IBM Software Solutions Division. "The elimination of
price and support barriers will increase the adoption and deployment of
SOM-based components and applications and spur growth in component
commerce."

"IBM is making it more cost-effective for tool vendors such as Secant to
build and supply distributed object solutions within large enterprises,"
said John Pompeii, director of Systems Architecture and Development,
Secant Technologies. "The free availability of SOMobjects 2.1, increased
functionality of SOM 3.0, and new support and services will help us
provide more competitive offerings to our customers."

SOMobjects 2.1 is available free of charge via the Internet for development
on OS/2, AIX, and Windows 3.11 operating systems. SOM support for Windows
NT and 95 is provided through IBM VisualAge* C++ for Windows Version 3.5,
which is available for a base price of $449.00. The VisualAge family of
powertools enables developers to build cross-platform applications from
reusable, object-oriented software components.

SOM is IBM's implementation of the Object Management Group (OMG) Common
Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)** standard for open object
interoperability. Direct-to-SOM support, which automates the creation of
SOM objects using familiar C++ or COBOL syntax, is provided through
VisualAge for C++ and VisualAge for COBOL on the OS/2 platform, and
VisualAge for C++ for Windows.

SOM 3.0 for OS/2 offers significant enhancements to SOMobjects 2.1,
including CORBA 2.0 interoperability through the Internet Interoperability
Protocol (IIOP)**, and CORBA 2.0 services. Naming, events, persistence,
lifecycle, concurrency, transactions, identity, and externalization are
among the new CORBA services.

Availability

Information, resources and SOMobjects 2.1 and SOM 3.0 early beta code are
currently available for downloading through a new IBM Software website on
the World Wide Web, SOMware at the Club, at
http://www.software.ibm.com/object/somobjects. Beta testing of SOMobjects
2.1 for MVS and OS/400 platforms is underway. SOM technology is
incorporated in OS/390 Open Edition*.

Please Note: Questions about the content or currency of this press release
should be directed to your local IBM representative.
 
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