Products Will Permit Rapid Delivery

And Platform Independence

Mainframe hardware and software maker Amdahl Corp. and GM subsidiary Electronic Data Systems (EDS) have formed the Antares Alliance Group, a joint venture company that will market software tools that allow complex applications to move freely between networks of desktop computers and mainframes.

The companies say the new Antares technology will permit the rapid development and maintenance of applications that are platform independent and can support a wide range of client-server, distributed computing environments.

Amdahl's contribution to the venture is its Huron applications development, production and maintenance system. EDS is providing the InCASE data modeling and application building system, and its COBOL conversion and business modeling tools. The Amdahl and EDS laboratories that developed those products are being transferred to Antares to facilitate future development of leading-edge software products, the companies say.

Antares will market its products through OEMs, VARs and other distributors. The products will also be available through Amdahl's direct sales force and will be used by EDS to standardize the development environment for some of its business units and for those units' customers.

|A New, Simpler Approach'

"Consistent with Amdahl's and EDS' commitment to open systems, the joint venture will make it possible for more enterprises to make use of proven software technologies that work with the largest number of standard platforms, operating systems, graphical user interfaces, and database management systems available," says John Cavalier, Antares CEO. "We expect Antares' products to become pervasive standards as a broad array of vendors and users adopt them."

The companies say Antares products will unify desktop, UNIX and mainframe computing, allowing users to "write an application once and move it across to different operating platforms in a highly productive way." They say the products will replace the traditional application development life cycle with "a new, simpler approach that quickly and interactively allows software to be written."

Future products form the Antares joint venture will run under multiple operating systems such as Windows, UTS, Solaris, UNIX, OS/2, AIX, Windows NT, and MVS, and on a variety of hardware platforms including Sun/SPARC, RS/6000, System/396 and 486-based systems.