Report from the ColoradOS/2 Conference- by Martin Brampton

(editor's note: the following originally appeared in EurOS/2 Magazine, Volume 1 Number 14, 28th October 1996.)

This month, I've been in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, nearly ten thousand feet above sea level. The fifth International ColoradOS/2 Conference, with over 350 software developers, gathered at Keystone, Colorado. This is the third year running that I've been able to attend, and every time it has been an outstanding conference. Delegates come from all over the world -- more than a third of the total are from outside the US. Speakers are highly expert, including key members of the OS/2 development team from IBM. Many delegates have remarked that it is the best conference they have ever attended, combining technical excellence with a friendly atmosphere and pleasant surroundings.

Sadly, numbers were down nearly 100 from last year, making it a disappointing outcome for the dedicated organisers, Wayne and Peggy Kovsky. Next year, they plan to change the format a little, and move back to an earlier venue in more accessible Colorado Springs.

Keynote Sessions

The conference encouraged early risers by holding a keynote session at 8 am every morning. First speaker of the week was John W. Thompson, General Manager of the IBM Personal Software Products Division. His positive message was that OS/2 is a valued and growing element in IBM's total revenues with a long term future. Any thought of abandoning it is absurd, since IBM has identified the top 1,000 OS/2 users as customers who, in total, account for 24 billion dollars of IBM's revenues.

Java and the Internet were emphasised as keys to OS/2's future. The predominance of large organisations in the OS/2 user base is to be recognised more in future, with fewer major upgrades, but continuing service upgrades. This is emphatically not a reduction in commitment to development -- in fact more effort is being devoted to development -- but a recognition that many organisations find it impractical to constantly upgrade systems software. John W. allowed a generous period for sometimes hostile questions, and his willingness to attend the conference was a positive move. Sadly many delegates were disappointed with the low key message that he conveyed.

On Tuesday morning, John A. Soyring, IBM Vice President and long time OS/2 exponent gave a polished and altogether more upbeat presentation. He outlined the OS/2 business strategy as being based on three factors:

and discussed how he hoped to see OS/2 holding its position of strength in large organisations, while steadily pushing into smaller ones. He talked of us entering a third phase of computing, the first being mainframe and mini with the famed application backlog and the second being client-server PCs. While the PC phase had seemed to be a panacea opening up new horizons, it had become a Pandora's Box of escalating support costs for marginal gains. The third phase is network computing, combining the best of both the earlier phases, and in which OS/2 is intended to play a key role.

Thursday morning's keynote session was by Paul Giangarra, the architect of OS/2, and offered a technical comparison of OS/2 and WindowsNT. Also covered where comparisons were possible, was Windows 95, but in a number of areas this was inapplicable. Paul mentioned that Microsoft Japan now only puts forward NT in competitive situations against OS/2. Paul disclosed that SMP was considered for Warp 4, but rejected on the grounds that too few SMP capable machines are being sold. SMP is likely to be introduced in future.

Friday's keynote was given by Joel Krautheim of SPG, the producers of the successful graphics program, ColorWorks. Joel gave a vigorous marketing man's exposition of how to introduce new products into the OS/2 market, leaving behind competition who are saddled with "legacy" products. From the OS/2 market, it is then feasible to launch an attack on the wider Windows market.

The conference closed with a presentation by David Barnes, IBM's cheer leader for OS/2. With no pretence at technical content, David wound up the proceedings with an impressive demonstration of how and how not to use VoiceType and a series of quick fire jokes.

Java Fever!

Apart from the enthusiasm for OS/2, the most striking aspect of the conference was huge interest in Java. Sessions relating to all aspects of Java were filled to overflowing -- demonstrations of the Visual Age visual development tool for Java; seminars on Java programming; Java technology directions, including the impact of Java on IBM's highly regarded SOM and DSOM object models.

Java is now an integral part of OS/2 Warp v4 (often known as Merlin). The released version is complete at version 1.0, but further upgrades are already on the way with 1.02 and a "Just In Time" compiler expected in beta during November. IBM is strongly committed to Java, partly as a unifying factor across its own platforms, but most especially on OS/2. IBM is pushing to make OS/2 the premier platform for running Java, as well as implementing Java for Windows 3.x to ensure the broadest possible Java coverage. The notion of Java applications received a boost recently as Corel started to prove their practicality by delivering a beta of Word Perfect in Java. Although not as far advanced, Lotus are also investing heavily in Java based components.

Mike Cowlishaw, IBM Fellow, was presenting his new NetRexx language, a blend of the best features of Rexx and Java. Mike is well known as the designer of Rexx, the popular interpreted language. Java is a powerful object oriented programming language, with the tremendous benefit of operating across almost all platforms. NetRexx takes the approach of Rexx, producing a language that always aims to work in a natural way for human beings. It is quicker and easier to write, simpler to get right and translates into Java for the full benefits of cross platform implementation.

Support for OS/2

Another interesting topic, apart from the many technical presentations, was IBM's developing support services. Pat McCarty, manager of service operations, spoke about the role of support at the Wednesday keynote session. This included the way in which even product design is now influenced by support considerations. For OS/2 "Merlin" the final decisions on what went into the delivered system were affected by all groups involved. Pat pointed to the excellent results achieved in a recent US "PC Magazine" survey, where various aspects of support were evaluated for MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 95 and Windows NT as well as for OS/2. The outcome was not only an overall clear win for OS/2, but a win in every category.

A notable absence from the conference was complaints from the Europeans that they were poorly supported relative to US users. A few comments were made, but far less than in previous years.

Numerous Technical Presentations

The comments above describe only a tiny portion of the dozens of presentations that were on offer to conference delegates. These ranged from writing OS/2 DLLs to Visual Age Smalltalk, from the C++ Open Class Library to Hotwire Technology for OpenDoc Components, from DSOM to HPFS internals, from Corba programming to the kernel debugger, from Rexx to Lotus Notes and many, many more. For more details, consult the ColoradOS/2 web page.

EurOS/2 Contact Information

We would like to encourage anyone working to achieve successful OS/2 implementations to participate in EurOS/2. All communications are despatched electronically, via Internet or CompuServe. To receive regular information from EurOS/2, please let us know your first name, last name, company, job title, address, telephone, fax, Internet e-mail address, CompuServe e-mail address, and indicate which form of communication you prefer.

EurOS/2 can be contacted in the following ways:

Martin Brampton is the organizer of EurOS/2 and editor of EurOS/2 Magazine, published by e-mail and WWW.

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