Object Computing Inc. (OCI) Announces the Availability of Commercial Support for the ACE ORB (TAO)

SAINT LOUIS, Mo., February 14, 2000—OCI announced today that it now provides commercial support for TAO on both the LynxOS® and the open-source BlueCat™ Linux from Lynx Real-time Systems, Inc. This highly rated object request broker (ORB) has been developed over the last few years to meet the challenging needs of high-performance and real-time distributed applications and makes it an excellent match to the operating systems from Lynx.

TAO already has a large user base, and this is expected to expand rapidly as OCI's commercial support model, previously limited to general-purpose operating systems, is expanded into the realm of real-time O/Ss. The hallmark of TAO is its conformance to standards, superior efficiency, predictability, scalability, wide platform support and absence of license fees. Many of TAO's hundreds of users have been reluctant to progress beyond the evaluation stage until they could be sure of quality commercial support. This announcement meets that need. OCI's E-Commerce site at www.theaceorb.com offers easy and fast ordering for customers from around the world.

Dr. Moshiri the CEO of OCI commented that support for a quality real-time O/S such as Lynx is a natural expansion of OCI's open source business strategy, which is service based. "Many of our key customers have developed on other platforms with our support, and are targeting Lynx. We are now in position to help them all the way to their embedded system."

About TAO and ACE

TAO, an open source implementation of the Object Management Group's (OMG) Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) specification, was developed by the Distributed Object Computing (DOC) Group at Washington University in St. Louis under the direction of Dr. Douglas Schmidt. Dr. Schmidt is an internationally recognized expert in patterns and framework components for real-time middleware. Version 1.0 of TAO is designed to be compliant with CORBA 2.2 and includes some aspects of CORBA 2.3. Although initially targeted for real-time environments, TAO is also well suited for general-purpose environments where TAO provides better, more consistent performance than the traditional "best effort" service of other ORBs. Thus, all applications can benefit from the same characteristics that make TAO attractive for real-time developers.

TAO's second generation ORB design, with its up front consideration of real-time requirements, is particularly well suited for use in demanding environments. Such considerations must include: avoiding end-to-end priority inversion; maintaining upper bounds on latency and jitter; and providing bandwidth guarantees. These combine to ensure predictable behavior. TAO enables applications to obtain specified levels of what is called Quality of Service (QoS). In addition, because TAO is flexible and open source, it is also suitable for embedded application environments that typically demand small footprint and low cost, as well as good performance.

Traditionally, the barrier to viable real-time CORBA has been that many real-time challenges are associated with end-to-end system design aspects. Challenges that transcend the layering boundaries traditionally associated with CORBA. TAO's design provides for the integration of network interfaces, OS I/O subsystems, ORB, and middleware services, in order to provide an end-to-end solution, should the developer require it.

TAO, by virtue of the underlying ACE (ADAPTIVE Communications Environment) C++ framework, supports a wide range of platforms and operating systems. ACE is a pioneering open source middleware framework that provides a rich set of reusable C++ wrapper façades and components that encapsulate common communication software tasks across many OS platforms.

ACE provides TAO with exceptional extensibility and the ability to span many platforms. ACE mitigates the maintenance issues that normally arise when trying to support multiple diverse operating system environments. ACE is a critical layer in TAO's ladder of abstraction between the implementation of the specifics of operating and communication systems and the high level of abstraction afforded by CORBA. By leveraging ACE's abstraction layer at the systems level, TAO's design is platform neutral and devoid of the architectural biases that follow when the ORB design is targeted to specific operating systems.

Product and service offerings

OCI provides CD distributions, documentation kits, extensive CORBA and C++ training, testing, software engineering and consulting services for OO and CORBA. The addition of board level products running LYNX and TAO enables OCI to now offer consulting support more specific to a client's environment.

About Lynx Real-Time Systems

Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc. is the leader in embedded Linux and the pre-eminent developer and supplier of operating system software for reliable and high-performance embedded applications. Lynx products support industry standards in communications, avionics, automotive, office automation and process control systems worldwide, enabling customers to leverage their investments in software and education. Those products include the open source BlueCat Linux OS, the LynxOS scalable, real-time operating systems, software frameworks for high-availability systems, development tools and technical support worldwide.

About Object Computing, Inc.

Object Computing Inc. (OCI) is a privately held software engineering company. OCI was founded in 1993 with a commitment to object oriented technology. Today OCI provides software systems consulting, product development, and educational services to progressive corporations across the United States in the Aerospace, Finance, Healthcare and telecommunication market segments. The St. Louis-based OCI Education Center has one of the most extensive object technology and Java training curricula in the MidWest. OCI has a significant presence in Phoenix as well as St. Louis, where its corporate headquarters are located.

Information on TAO: may also be obtained from Washington University's web site www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt.

Some benchmarking information comparing commercial ORBs with TAO is available from a user site, www.beust.com/virginie/Benchmarks.

An active newsgroup about TAO is available at news:comp.soft-sys.ace.

BlueCat is a trademark and LynxOS is a registered trademark of Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc. Other brand or product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of the respective holders.

LynuxWorks press contacts

Kirsten Long Director, Marketing Communications LynuxWorks, Inc. USA +1 408-979-4404	Barbara Stewart Patterson & Associates USA 480-488-6909
Hamid Mirab Managing Director EMEA LynuxWorks Ltd. United Kingdom +44 208-906-9506	Peter van der Sluijs Neesham Public Relations Europe +44 1442-879222