Table of contents

Message from the President
Salutation News
From the Managing Director
Salutation Scenarios
Product Focus
Tech Talk
Perspectives
Upcoming Events

Message from the President

Amid the recent press excitement regarding service discovery concepts and requirements, Jini has gone public, a glimpse of Universal Plug and Play has been offered, the Simple Service Discovery Protocol has surfaced�E and the number of available Salutation-enabled products has increased. Products announced for the US market in April include devices and servers from Canon, IBM, Muratec, and Ricoh!

While proprietary service discovery protocols continue to spring up and attempt to get off the drawing board, the protocol and operating system independent Salutation Architecture is shipping!

While supporters of the new service discovery protocols argue in the press in a game of "mine's better than yours", the members of the Salutation Consortium have been moving technology to market for two years.

While the new arrivals argue over the value of Java-base versus IP-based implementations, Salutation is technology independent and embraces IP, IR and wireless protocols.

And while the new arrivals talk in the future tense about tools and products, Salutation's members produce a full set of Salutation toolkits, Windows desktop enablers, and enabled devices and services.

Salutation's shipping while others are still thinking!

Salutation News

The Salutation Consortium's architecture for information sharing got a boost at the April AIIM Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, where IBM announced that NuOffice, a Lotus Notes-based office system, will be available in June in North America and Canon, Muratec, and Ricoh said they would ship Salutation-compliant multifunction peripherals supporting NuOffice. NuOffice and the supporting peripherals are the first major products in the United States to incorporate the Consortium's technology for information sharing.

According to Robert F. Pecora, managing director of the Consortium, the Salutation Consortium provides information-sharing technology that simplifies the transfer of data to and from office equipment. The products that incorporate Salutation technology support sites with many mobile or

telecommuting users.

The NuOffice office system includes Salutation extensions to Lotus Notes that enable users to print, scan, fax, and email without concern for device drivers or directories. Together the products deliver a unified system for scanning, document management, e-mail, messaging, fax, and distributed printing. NuOffice is the first major software application in the United States to incorporate the Consortium's technology for information sharing.

The products announced are:

NuOffice software and supporting devices adhere to the Salutation Architecture, open middleware technology for locating and controlling equipment across the Internet or a company intranet. Once a device has been located, Salutation can facilitate the attachment of the proper device drivers, allowing maximum possible use of the device and its capabilities.

"Salutation leads the way in enabling products to support network users with a new level of information- and device-sharing technology. Major manufacturers in North America and Japan support our open-systems approach to service discovery and management. Salutation-compliant products have been shipping for more than a year in some markets, and the catalog of tools and development aids is growing rapidly. A Windows-based Port-of-Entry tool provides desktop users with Salutation service discovery for existing peripherals, extending the appeal of building new applications right away." Said Pecora.

NuOffice is already a successful product in Japan, with supporting peripherals and software from Canon, Fuji Xerox, Hitachi Seibu Software, Mita, Muratec, Ricoh, and Sony. Market momentum around the NuOffice effort has resulted in Fuji Xerox adopting the Salutation Architecture as a company standard for networking office automation equipment. Pecora said, "While other proprietary solutions for service discovery and information management are just coming off the drawing boards, the availability of products supporting Salutation continues to expand."

From the Managing Director

Only one month has passed since Canon, IBM, Muratec and Ricoh announced the availability of Salutation enabled products for the US market. But these announcements already have had an impact. The first indication was the significant increase in the numbers of visitors to the Salutation Web Site. There were more than double the numbers of web page hits, during the announcement week, than any previous seven-day period and the number of visitors for April 1999 set an all time record. This was coupled with a record number of people who downloaded the Salutation specification. These activities started increasing the day of the announcements and continued at a higher than normal level for the entire month of April. Individuals are driving this increased interest and companies that have followed the progress of Salutation and by new ones that are taking notice because major Salutation enabled products and solutions will be available in the US in 1999.

As stated in the welcoming letter for the AIIM conference, the face of information management is changing at a dynamic rate. We’re moving from solutions silos to solution suites as companies migrate from one technology base to the model of integrating many technologies across the enterprise. I believe these are the primary reasons Canon, IBM, Ricoh and Muratec wanted their Salutation compliant products announced in conjunction with the AIIM conference. The IBM NuOffice, Lotus Notes Domino solution suite provides the framework that companies need to migrate to and integrate the new technologies for information management that are being delivered by Canon, Ricoh and Muratec. By implementing the Salutation Architecture, all of the devices announced by these companies provide the required interoperability to facilitate easy migration, integration and end-user utilization.

"Canon's IP Technology, previewed at the AIIM Conference and Exhibition, included an embedded version of the Salutation Architecture and was the focal point of an demonstration with IBM NuOffice and Lotus Notes Domino. Canon's commitment to supporting emerging industry standards is embodied in our Salutation enabled IP technology, which when combined with NuOffice and Lotus Notes, provides our customers with a comprehensive office solution that can satisfy their changing requirements for information access and sharing," said Dennis Amorosano, Assistant Director, Copier and Networked Office Systems, Canon U.S.A., Inc.

One major manufacturing company executive, that saw the Canon demonstration at AIIM, wanted to know how soon he would be able to replace his analog devices with Salutation enabled digital devices, so that his end-users and network administrators could take advantage of the many benefits this new solution can provide.

Salutation Scenarios

You received an interoffice e-mail saying your company has purchased some new equipment. Ricoh Aficio 450 digital imaging devices have been located on the 5^th and 7^th floors, and Muratec F-120 fax servers have been installed on the 3^rd and 5^th and 9^th floors. Other products from Canon are to be delivered shortly.

"Just great," you think. "Now I'll have to wait for the IT department to come to my office and load the device drivers for these new devices. That will take weeks!"

But then you notice something strange in your Lotus Notes electronic in-basket. It says it's a FAX from one of your suppliers. "A Fax in your in-basket? That's new!" you say under your breath. "How did that get there?" Normally, you pick up your faxes at the FAX machine out by the Administrative Assistant's work area.

You click on the in-basket entry and an image document opens, showing the FAX message.

"Hmmm. You can forward e-mail, do you think you can forward this new FAX message?" you think to yourself. You give it a try. You forward the fax-note to Doris in the office next to yours. Off it goes. Then you wander over to her office to see if it arrives.

Sure enough, your work mate gets the FAX message you forwarded. "How'd that happen?" you ask.

Doris tells you that your company has installed NuOffice for Lotus Notes, which supports the Salutation Architecture functions of receipt notification, inbound routing, and read confirmation for all inbound fax information. "Coupled with the Muratec F-120," Doris says, "it doesn’t matter if you are at the office, at home, or on the road. NuOffice recognizes your user ID and password when you log-in, then notifies you of any faxes received since you were last on-line.

"As you already discovered", she continues, "you can direct NuOffice to route the messages to any e-mail location. You can also route them to a LAN printer at the office, or to your personal printer at home. After you retrieves your messages, NuOffice will provide a read confirmation to the sender via callback to the originating fax machine."

"What will they think of next!" you exclaim.

"Well," says Doris, "you can already print to those new Ricoh devices."

"But they haven't been installed on my machine yet," you note, "and I don't know how to do it."

"No need to 'worry-up and wait'," says Doris. "NuOffice has a feature that will automatically install the Ricoh drivers you need so you can begin working right away. Here, I'll show you."

Doris elects to print the FAX you forwarded her. The Note's printer selection menu appears. There are two new selection options, one for each of the new Ricoh Aficio devices. Doris selects the device that is on your floor and printing begins.

You are amazed. But Doris says there is more. She shows you how you can use the Notes interface to determine the features that are installed on the Ricoh machine. Doris says that the Salutation Architecture that forms the basis for the NuOffice product allows you to view the capabilities of devices connected to the corporate network. When the new Salutation-enabled Canon products are installed, you can use this same technique to see what features they offer. It's like having an on-line brochure advertising the machine's functions.

"Anything else I can help you with?" she asks.

"No, that's great!" you say to her. But, to yourself you say, "Yeah, how did you find out about this before I did?"

Product Focus

IBM announced the North American availability of NuOffice, a networked office system based on Lotus Notes Domino that simplifies the transfer of data to and from office equipment. NuOffice and its supporting peripherals adhere to the Salutation Architecture, open middleware technology for locating and controlling equipment across the Internet or a company intranet. Once a device has been located, Salutation can facilitate the attachment of the proper device drivers.

Tech Talk

Jini technology provides simple mechanisms which enable devices to plug together to form an impromptu community -- a community put together without any planning, installation, or human intervention. Each device provides services that other devices in the community may use.

The Java programming language is the key to making Jini technology work. In a network employing Jini technology, devices are tied together using Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI). The discovery and join protocols, as well as the lookup service, depend on the ability to move Java objects, including their code, between Java virtual machines. For Jini connection technology to succeed, the underlying protocols and infrastructure must become pervasive.

Sun will not go unimpeded with Jini. Microsoft has taken a passive-aggressive approach to Jini and Java. While publicly ignoring both Sun initiatives by claiming Java is just another programming language, Microsoft has unilaterally enhanced Java in its implementation of Internet Explorer. For a real-time demonstration of these differences, view http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/Jan99/PLUGNPlay+QS.htm from Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is an open standard technology for transparently connecting appliances, PCs, and services by extending Plug and Play to support networks and peer-to-peer discovery and configuration. UPnP will be implemented for all Microsoft® Windows® platforms, for PCs and devices running under the Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows CE operating systems. Microsoft has made available UPnP specifications, an implementation guide, and sample source code at WinHEC 99. No licensing fee will be required for implementing solutions using the sample code Microsoft provides.

According to Microsoft, the Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP), a subset of UPnP, provides a mechanism where by network clients, with little or no static configuration, can discover desired network services. SSDP uses HTTP over multicast and unicast UDP to provide two functions: OPTIONS and ANNOUNCE.

• An OPTION is used to determine if a desired network service exists on the network.
• An ANNOUNCE is used by network services to announce their existence.

SSDP performs only discovery. It leaves any additional service description and/or negotiation to a higher layer service-specific protocol.

SSDP is clearly defined for an IP environment, requiring both UDP multicast/unicast and HTTP message syntax. Microsoft's vision for SSDP is small peer-to-peer TCP/IP networks, such as home or small office networks.

The Salutation Consortium's architecture starts from the position that network architectures should be free of vendor-imposed limitations. Salutation is not limited to nor does it have a prerequisite for the Java, UDP or HTTP. It is platform, OS, and network independent. Salutation Architecture does not assume a single pervasive infrastructure. In fact, one of Salutation's strengths is its ability to support multiple infrastructures through a single implementation.

While Jini and SSDP continue to invent themselves, Salutation implementations are already in the market place, including developer toolkits, MFPs, Fax devices, and Windows platform enablers.

It must be stressed that Salutation is an Open Architecture. One or two large companies do not control it, rather it is controlled by a dedicated group of industry leaders who wish to provide common service discovery and session management so they can focus on bringing rich functionality to their customers.

• The Salutation protocols are nonproprietary. You can get the specification from the Web. Your company can participate in further specification development.
• Unlike the reports about Jini, there are no royalty charges associated with implementation of Salutation.
• Jini has a dependence on Java to enable all its promise. Salutation can be implemented in Java, or any other language (Windows 95/98/NT and Windriver's Tornado are available, plans are in the works for Windows CE and Palm OS).
• Jini and UPnP/SSDP are targeted for IP networks; Salutation can operate in any network, including IP, IR and, in the future, wireless.
• Salutation's light footprint makes it a candidate for small devices. Jini has not made inroads here. UPnP/SSDP is still a question in this space.
• To meet full potential, Jini and UPnP/SSDP require a directory of sorts. Salutation is comfortable in either directory centric or point-to-point applications.
• While Jini and UPnP/SSDP are vying for column-inches in trade magazines, Salutation-enabled products are quietly shipping.
• Implementations of Jini and UPnP/SSDP are still far off. Salutation is proven in both devices and services, with Software Development Toolkits available from multiple sources.
• Jini does not eliminate the need for device drivers, it merely provides a mechanism for locating Java-based device drivers. IBM NuOffice, an existing Salutation-enablement for Lotus Notes, available in the US and Japan, also provides a mechanism to locate and load device drivers, but without the Java prerequisite.

The Salutation Consortium has no hidden agenda. As has been said, "What you see is what you get!"

It's your best choice for discovery and service management.

Jini details derived from http://www.sun.com/jini/overview/;$sessionid$OTK1RLIAACJXPAMUVFZE5YQ#999106

Perspective

Las Vegas - At least five groups representing vastly different approaches to home networking preached interoperability at [the] Consumer Electronics Show (CES). But their message came amid demonstrations of diverse ways-over phone lines, airwaves and, in one or two cases, power lines-to interconnect home PCs and appliances.

Microsoft Corp. was the most visible, revealing an operating-system extension for home networks that would allow various devices on separate wired and wireless networks to link via Windows-based systems.

"We don't care what the transmission media is," said Phil Holden, home-network program manager. Microsoft proposes to extend the OS multilayer model to home networks (and, by implication, to insert itself as the network operating system of choice). With "Universal Plug-and-Play" (UPnP), all network devices would carry a small amount of ROM code (less than 40 kbytes) that would identify itself to a computer host. The host would automatically assign it an Internet Protocol address. Servers (Internet service providers on WANs, for example, or home PCs on LANs) would use something like a broadcast dynamic name service, said Holden, and clients (home PCs, palmtops or entertainment appliances) would use something like a lightweight discovery protocol.

"We plan to package the software technology up, making it available at the WinHEC in April for those who are interested in building their systems based on the Universal Plug and Play," said Craig Mundie, senior vice president, consumer strategy at Microsoft.

Microsoft's UPnP will compete with Sun Microsystems' Jini-like distributed-computing technology (see EETimes Nov. 23, 1998, page 1). Jini, based on Sun' s Java language, is a separate scheme for connected devices across different networks and operating environments and [was] detailed by Sun [in January].

The need to embrace diverse home networks was plain at CES. The HomeRF Consortium, which includes heavyweights like Hewlett-Packard and Intel, advocates wireless connectivity. The Home Phone Networking Association (HomePNA) advocates in-home phone-line wiring (with RJ-11 connectors) to network home computers. And startups like Enikia (Piscataway, N.J.) have shown networks that use home ac power lines to transmit data between computers and appliances.

Even among groups that advocate a similar medium, proponents back different technologies. Startup ShareWave (El Dorado Hills, Calif.), for example, showed its wireless network that offers high-bandwidth connections (up to 4 Mbits/second) with video compression for home PCs and entertainment devices. ShareWave's marketing vice president, Bob Bennett, said he would reveal some technology in hopes of developing an interoperability standard with the HomeRF group.

Similarly, Jeff Thermond, president of Epigram (Sunnyvale, Calif.), discussed interoperability as he demonstrated his 10-Mbit/s-phone line LAN. Epigram has offered HomePNA its system, which uses Ethernet protocols, as a model to copy for its own 10-Mbit/s standard. "HomePNA has a pretty aggressive schedule for developing the 2.0 spec," said Thermond.

But Bob Dillon, Enikia's outspoken vice president of marketing, put all the interoperability talk in a different perspective-characterizing it, perhaps, as "the emperor's new clothes." Enikia demonstrated a 10-Mbit/s LAN that uses ac power lines as its transmission media. It makes little pretense of being interoperable with Intellon Corp. (Ocala, Fla.), which offers 1 Mbit/s over existing power lines, or Adaptive Networks (Cambridge, Mass.), which uses power lines for 384- kbit/s control applications.

Salutation has always been in the home business (http://www.salutation.org/ussalute/salinhome2.htm). And considering the plethora of technologies described in this article, Salutation's independence from underlying operating systems and network protocols make it the best candidate for service discovery and utilization. See TechTalk in this issue of Greetings!

 Upcoming Events

- July, 1999

- July, 1999

- US location to be announced

• June, 1999