FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FOR MORE INFORMATION Sun Microsystems, Inc. Dennis Freeman (415) 336-6117 Hi-Tech PR Claudia Carasso (415) 864-5600 Mt Xinu Alan Tobey (415) 644-0146 MT XINU BECOMES MASTER DISTRIBUTOR OF ONC/NFS FOR MACH OPERATING SYSTEM WASHINGTON, D.C. January 23,1990 At the Uniforum trade show being held here, Sun Microsystems and Mt Xinu today announced the signing of an agreement under which Mt Xinu will become a master distributor of Sun's Open Network Computing/Network File System (ONC/NFSTM) networking standard for Carnegie Mellon University's Mach operating system. ONC/NFS will become a standard component of all commercial versions of Mach to be distributed and supported by Mt Xinu, a leading developer of UNIX system software. Mach is a multiprocessing operating system developed by Carnegie Mellon with support from the Defense Advanced Resealch Projects Administration (DARPA). Mach features an advanced, simplified kernel design on which to build modem UNIX facilities. Mt Xinu is under contract from CMU to develop and distribute the version called 2.6 MSD ("Mach Standard Distribution") for the Sun3, Digital VAX and IBM RT PC workstations. Versions for other systems will follow. Mt Xinu will integrate ONC/NFS with the Andrew File System (AFS) and offer a complete source code release to system manufacturers and software developers. The licenses Sun's ONC/NFS 2.6 MSD version will provide a full 4.3BSD ("Berkeley UNIX") interface and will be binary compatible with most 4.3BSD applications. Mt Xinu becomes one of Sun's select NFS master distributors, licensed to distribute source code to companies who, in turn, may distribute binaries to their customers. Mt Xinu will distribute the full ONC platform, including the RPC libraries and NFS. C/NFS, part of Sun's SunNetTM family of networking products, is the defacto standard for sharing computer files across disparate computer systems. The technology has been licensed by more than 290 organizations and system vendors. In addition, ONC's Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol is the basis of the Common Distributed Computing Platform for the development of multivendor distributed computing applications. Unveiled in September 1989, this common platform will be supported by Sun, Novell and Netwise and endorsed by 3Com, Banyan, Lotus, Oracle, Informix, Ingres, Sybase and other software developers. "Now Mach software developers and users will have access to the same standard distributed computing environment and network file system already available for most major operating systems worldwide," said Bill Keating, Sun's director of technology marketing. "Software developers who write to the RPC common platform will now be able to run their distributed applications across Mach, UNIX System V.4, SunOS, Digital's VMS and Ultrix, PCDOS (through PCNFS), Novell Netware, IBM's MVS and VM for mainframes, and many other operating systems." "Adding ONC/NFS to Mach will greatly speed the acceptance of Mach in the development community," said Mt Xinu Sales Vice President Dick Wrenn. "NFS will help Mach fit into existing environments and will provide the filesharing technology and distributed applications platform that has been so useful for regular UNIX applications. Mt Xinu was Sun's first NFS distributor (in 198S), so we've had over four years to learn how to adapt NFS to new technologies as they emerge." Berkeley, Calif. based Mt Xinu, founded in 1982, specializes in the development, marketing and support of leadingedge UNIX system software for research, development and educational applications. Sun Microsystems, Inc., headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is a leading worldwide supplier of networkbased distributed computing systems, including professional workstations, servers and UNIX operating system and productivity software. ONC/NFS, SunNet and Sun3 are trademarks of Sun Microsystems. UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T. All other products or services mentioned in this document are identified by the trademarks or service marks of their respective companies or organizations. For reader inquiries, telephone 1-800-821-4643 outside California. Inside California, call 1-800-821-4642.