What's Hot at CeBIT

Rainer Mauth

No surprises this year: The Internet, multimedia products, data security, telephony, and high-speed network technology will be the stars of the world's biggest computing exhibition. When CeBIT '96 opens its doors for seven days starting March 14, attendees will be able to pick from more than 6300 exhibitors, representing 66 countries and filling an exhibition area of more than 330,000 square meters.

Not to be missed at CeBIT '96 are the new technologies and products that enable the convergence of telecommunications and computing, mobile communications, and full -grown ATM applications, as well as data-warehouse systems and workflow solutions.

This year mobile technologies will continue to record the fastest growth rates in the pr ivate telecom equipment segment, according to the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO). This growth is being driven by GSM (global system for mobile communications) and the adoption of data-packaging options by mobile service providers.

Not only are cellular GSM carriers extending their services by implementing improved data-transmission capabilities, but service providers are starting to support E-mail forwarding to pagers or mobile phones. The enabling technology is the GSM Short Message Service, or SMS. ComRoad, for example, offers an SMS service for mobile phones that includes broadcasting of traffic jams or weather warnings within a cell. The ComRoad service allows users of phones with SMS send facilities, such as Nokia's 2110, to route their E-mail to any destination via SMS. Industry observers expect to see this closer integration of computing technology and mobile phones leading to confluent features of mobile phones and PDAs.

The telecommunications and networking areas (most ly in Halls 11 to 17 and Hall 26) will account for more than 20 percent of this year's exhibition area. However, technologies such as wireless data transmission, computer telephony integration, and ISDN will be ubiquitous. At CeBIT there will be several intelligent and smoothly integrated telephony applications running on Windows 95; they're based on Microsoft's revised Unimodem/V and TAPI (Telephony API) drivers.

Tedas, for example, will show a fully featured software-based ISDN telephone. It requires a bidirectional sound board with a bidirectional Windows 95 driver and an ISDN controller that's compliant with CAPI (Common ISDN API). In such an environment, Tedas' Phone-ware for ISDN package offers speech recognition via phone and text-to-speech conversion. MegaSoft will present a TAPI-compliant voice-mail and voice-recognition application for analog and ISDN lines in several European languages. The Winphone program allows users to create software answering machines for a modem without using a sound board. It can be integrated in applications without communication facilities (for example, in simple CD-ROM catalogs).

Some experts expect Microsoft to show its own TAPI-based speech-recognition and telephony applications and promote a new ISDN interface for Windows 95 called the ISDN Pack. Sources also say the ISDN Pack will not be compliant with CAPI.

Companies such as Media Phonics and miro are taking another approach to multimedia communications. Media Phonics' DSP-based Gallileo board, for instance, integrates phone, fax, voice, sound, and modem. It comes with software that offers call transfer and monitoring as well as answering-machine and fax-on-demand functions. A year ago, miro introduced a similar solution, the miroConnect 34. At this year's show, the latest version of miro's multimedia board will include advanced text-to-speech functions and remote fax and E-mail routing via phone. (The company will also present new graphics boards and new 17- and 20-inch Trinitro n monitors.)

In Europe, especially in Germany and the U.K., ISDN has become popular as an internetworking medium for LANs. Therefore, expect to see lots of applications integrating ISDN, desktop PCs, and mobile computers. Also expect to see many combined modem, X.25, and ISDN terminal programs that support ISDN-Euro file transfer, E-mail, and remote access. A good example is RVS' RVS-COM for Windows 95.

Powerful multiprotocol routers (MPRs) that connect WAN and LAN environments will also be exhibited at CeBIT. Acotec's new MPR for Windows NT, for example, is one of the first hardware-independent MPRs for that operating system. Acotec's software makes a CAPI-compliant ISDN board work as a router connecting remote NT LANs. It includes line-management functions such as spoofing and filtering and is able to route NetBIOS over IP.

Because of its higher bandwidth, ISDN is also the preferable medium for corporate Internet dial-up. "ISDN for the Internet will be a big part of our CeBIT news," says U we Scholz of AVM, an ISDN hardware and software manufacturer. "We will show ISDN solutions for Internet clients and servers."

Another ISDN company, Dr. Materna, will promote its new Web solution that allows Unix-based client/server applications to be accessed over a standard Web browser. This is a flexible way to remotely access a Unix application from virtually any operating system, and it is independent of the type of Internet access.

One of the first graphical development tools for Sun's Web programming language, Java, will be demonstrated at CeBIT: Innovative Software's new Object Engineering Workbench for Java. This edition of OEW displays Java classes and their relationship and automatically translates them into source code. It allows for the creation of subset views of large models and supports reverse engineering and the reuse of existing Java code through a symbolic parser. Furthermore, this development tool can generate the entire documentation of a project in Hypert ext Markup Language (HTML). You can download the current version of OEW for Java at http://www.isg.de .

ATM World

CeBIT will again be an important platform for the launch of new ATM networking products. Hall 11, known as "ATM World," will be dedicated totally to high-speed network technologies. Cellware will present an ATM switch for video on demand (VOD). Called Cell-Master VOD, this system provides network access for up to 40 VOD users and supports ATM Application Layer 1 for the transmission of voice, video, and sound. It demultiplexes and regenerates the individual subscriber's 1.5- or 2-Mbps signals to feed interface units that are based on asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) technology.

RAD Data Communications says it will unveil a modem based on ADSL's faster sibling, high-bit- rate digital subscriber line (HDSL). The modem will run over two standard telephone wires. The company will also show a new ATM workgroup switch for 25-Mbps and 155-Mbps traffic.

Of course, the workstation and server arena will showcase many new products. Siemens Nixdorf (SNI) will present its latest 64-bit RISC midrange servers called the C-Series. These machines are based on up to four Mips R4400 processors. They feature a PCI bus and run under Unix as well as under Windows NT. SNI says these systems can be upgraded to R10000 processors as soon as these chips are available. You will also see several new workstations and servers based on Intel's Pentium Pro. Look for machines from SNI, Vobis, Escom, and Olivetti.

This year's CeBIT will target exclusively professional and corporate IT users. Home PC users will get their own biannual show, called CeBIT Home, that's slated for August.

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WHERE TO FIND

Cellware
 or (Cell-Master VOD)
Berlin, Germany
Phone:  + 49 30 4670820
Fax:    + 49 30 4670820
E-Mail: 
info@cellware.de


CeBIT Stand: Hall 11 B50


ComRoad
 or (MobilMail)
Oberschleissheim, Germany
Phone:  + 49 89 3157190
Fax:    + 49 89 3151694
E-Mail: 
julian@solidinfo.com

Internet: 
http://www.solid.com


CeBIT Stand: Hall 26 E60


Dr. Materna
 or (WWW solution package)
Dortmund, Germany
Phone: + 49 231 5599160
Fax:   + 49 231 5599165

CeBIT Stand: Hall 3 C57


Innovative Software
 or (OEW for Java)
Frankfurt, Germany
Phone:  + 49 69 236929
Fax:    + 49 69 236939
E-Mail: 
100272.515@compuserve
.com

Internet: 
http://www.isg.de


CeBIT Stand: Hall 3 A07


Media Phonics
 or (Gallileo)
Bedvaix, Switzerland
Phone: + 41 38 462035
Fax:   + 41 38 462035

CeBIT Stand: Microsoft Partners 


MegaSoft
 or (WinPhone)
Vienna, Austria
Phone: + 43 1 470 2022 12
Fax:   + 43 1 470 2022 77

CeBIT Stand: Hall 5 D56


miro Computer Products
 or (miroConnect 34 Surf)
Braunschweig, Germany
Phone: + 49 531 21130
Fax:   + 49 531 211399

CeBIT Stand: Hall 8 C36


RAD Data Communications
 or (HDSL modem, ATM workgroup switch)
Tel Aviv, Israel
Phone: + 972 3 645 8107
Fax:   + 972 3 498 250

CeBIT Stand: Hall 12 A14


RVS
 or (RVS-COM)
Munich, Germany
Phone: + 49 89 357157 0
Fax:   + 49 89 357157 99


CeBIT Stand: Hall 13 G11


Siemens Nixdorf
 or (C Series midrange servers)
Paderborn, Germany
Phone: +49 5251 815350
Fax:   + 49 5251 815353

CeBIT Stand: Hall 1 5e2/5f1


Tedas
 or (Phoneware for ISDN)
Marburg, Germany
Phone: +49 6421 91020
Fax:   + 49 6421 910299

CeBIT Stand: Hall 5 E44


HotBYTEs
 - information on products covered or advertised in BYTE

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ISDN Software Telephone

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Look for many hot telephony applications for Windows 95. Tedas' Phoneware, for example, offers a c omplete ISDN software telephone that includes call management, caller ID, speech recognition via phone, and text-to-speech facilities.

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Siemens Nixdorf: Next Generation

photo_link (26 Kbytes)

Siemens Nixdorf's new generation of 64-bit RISC servers works with up to four parallel R4400 processors. The systems run under Unix as well as under Windows NT.

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OEW for Java is Innovative

screen_link (38 Kbytes)

Innovative Software's OEW for Java is one of the first graphical development tools for the Web programming language. It displays classes and their relationships and automatically generates Java source code.