IBM ANNOUNCES RELEASE OF OPENDOC ALPHA FOR OS/2

NEW YORK, June 29, 1994...IBM today announced it will make its OpenDoc for
OS/2 alpha software available to developers this week as part of the IBM
Personal Software Products Developer Connection CD-ROM. Developers can use
the alpha code to familiarize themselves with the OpenDoc application
programming interface and function while learning to program sample
OpenDoc component parts in OS/2. IBM demonstrated OpenDoc on OS/2 publicly
for the first time at PC Expo today.

OpenDoc technology is currently a collaborative effort by Apple Computer,
IBM and WordPerfect who have pooled their technologies for developing and
integrating component software through the OpenDoc architecture. IBM
System Object Model technology is one of four core technologies that
underpin OpenDoc, a component-based compound document architecture that
enables programmers to re-use software components and gives users the
ability to create customized features such as "drag and drop" and
shredders.

"OpenDoc enables the true re-use of software components so that our
developers can write less code, and can create more functionally rich
applications in less time," said Cliff Reeves, director of object-enabling
technology for IBM Personal Software Products division.. With OpenDoc,
applications will be delivered more economically and will be flexible and
extensible. Developers will be able to adapt them more quickly to new
technologies and to users' needs."

A New Paradigm for Developers and End Users

OpenDoc's component software architecture will enable software developers
to focus on their areas of expertise because they no longer will have to
recreate all the features of an application themselves. With OpenDoc,
developers can begin converting code for existing modules of code into
components, which they can re-use to deliver more integrated products with
shorter programming cycles and quicker time to market, reducing
development costs.

For end users, OpenDoc delivers a new paradigm for creating documents by
enabling multiple applications to work on the same document. With OpenDoc,
end users can integrate live data from varying applications such as
spreadsheets, graphics, multimedia applications into a single document
intuitively and interactively. Users can view and edit text, graphics and
multimedia content within documents without having to invoke separate
applications.

IBM's System Object Model Standard

OpenDoc includes technology from IBM, Apple and WordPerfect. IBM
contributed the System Object Model (SOM). SOM has been available as part
of the OS/2 Workplace Shell for more than two years and is a
well-established technology.

"The software industry is driving toward open standards and component-based
software such as OpenDoc," said Reeves. "To jump-start that process, IBM
has made the source code for SOM technology widely available to the
industry in order to create a standard way to package and access objects,
thereby establishing a path for interoperability across platforms.

Because SOM technology is language-neutral, software developers can create
OpenDoc application components using multiple languages, ranging from
object-oriented languages such as C++ and Smalltalk or in traditional
procedural languages such as C and COBOL. This development process is not
possible with proprietary object paradigms such as Microsoft's OLE.

Currently nine tool vendors have licensed SOM technology for incorporation
in their products. These include MetaWare, ParcPlace Systems, Easel Corp.,
Intelligent Environments, and Symantec, among others. IBM anticipates that
another 20 vendors will license the technology by the end of the year.

OpenDoc Interoperability Across All Platforms

OpenDoc will span all popular desktop and server platforms and will
integrate individual desktops with enterprise information systems. SOM
complies with the Object Management Group's Common Object Request Broker
Architecture specification, CORBA, which makes objects work across
platforms. SOM and Distributed System Object Model will be available soon
in non-OS/2 OpenDoc platforms, extending OpenDoc component brokering to
heterogeneous networks.

Interoperability with OLE

OpenDoc's Open Linking and Embedding of Objects provides a set of class
libraries which will enable seamless interoperability with OLE. The
OpenDoc strategy is to allow objects developed today for OLE 2.0 to run in
the OpenDoc world, and OpenDoc components to embed in OLE applications.
Open Linking and Embedding of Objects will enable bi-directional
interoperability between OpenDoc and Microsoft OLE 2.0 for users and
developers. Engineers from major ISVs are continuously working on the
OpenDoc API to assure that it meets the latest Microsoft OLE 2.0 support
requirements.

CI Labs: Ensuring Industry Access

CI Labs, San Francisco, Calif., will provide the technological
specifications and foundation technology for this architecture and will
license and promote the technologies contributed by sponsor companies and
distribute them as reference source code. In addition to the current
sponsor companies, Apple, IBM and WordPerfect, support for OpenDoc will be
provided by Novell, the SunSoft division of Sun Microsystems, Taligent,
and the XSoft division of Xerox Corp.

In addition to IBM's OpenDoc for OS/2, alpha releases of WordPerfect's
OpenDoc for Windows and Apple's OpenDoc for Macintosh also are available.
Beta testing on all platforms will be conducted during the summer and
fall.

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