IBM ANNOUNCES LAN AND HOST OFFICE APPLICATIONS

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., June 29 . . . IBM today announced strategic office
products, both LAN- and host-based, that are designed to help customers
integrate their workgroups. These products were developed by IBM
Programming Systems (PRGS).

"With the rapid evolution of information technology in desktop, workgroup
and client/server computing, we want to help our OfficeVision customers
build on their existing investments in office-oriented information,
applications and systems," said Kathy Butler, PRGS director of office and
publishing systems marketing. "For those who want to integrate their host
and LAN office environments, or for those who want an orderly migration to
the LAN, it is important that our products and services allow them to do
just that."

IBM announced its intention to provide two integral products:

- Time and Place Connectivity/2, a product that is designed to allow
sharing of information between IBM Time and Place/2 and OfficeVision/VM
(OV/VM) calendaring and scheduling products, and

- Address Book Synchronization/2, a LAN and host address book
synchronization program.

IBM also announced the general availability of three office applications:

- IBM Mail LAN Gateway/2, a product that enables the exchange of electronic
mail between different platforms;

- Current-OfficeVision/400 (OV/400) Workgroup Program, a Windows-based
product that provides PC users with a graphical interface to OV/400-based
information; and

- Electronic Forms Management System/VM (ECFORMS/VM), a product used to
create and process forms online.

In addition, IBM today announced two new LAN-based applications. These
products are currently being tested by selected customers, and will be
made generally available when IBM's quality objectives have been
validated. They are:

- SearchManager/2, a full-text search and retrieval program, and

- Thesaurus Management System for OS/2, a terminology management system.

Dick Sullivan, director of office and publishing marketing, IBM US, said,
"IBM's objective is to provide world class workgroup applications across
multiple platforms, to offer integration services that truly exploit these
products and to provide our customers with unparalleled support. The
announcements today take full advantage of technology and reflect our
ongoing effort to be responsive to our customers' requirements."

Time and Place Connectivity/2

Time and Place Connectivity/2, a LAN-based, OS/2 32-bit technology, is
designed to allow users of IBM's Time and Place/2 workgroup scheduling
product and OV/VM to view each other's calendars in their "native"
environment and to perform free-time searches across both calendars.

Time and Place/2, made generally available March 12, is a key component of
IBM's LAN office solution for workgroups and supports both an OS/2 2.0 or
2.1 32-bit client and a Windows 3.1 client.

Time and Place/2 and Time and Place Connectivity/2 are intended to allow
office users in a mixed host and LAN environment to better manage their
time and schedule meetings more effectively.

IBM intends to provide the Time and Place Connectivity/2 function that will
enable viewing of calendars and free timesearch across IBM Time and
Place/2 and IBM's other host OfficeVision calendars.

Address Book Synchronization/2

Address Book Synchronization/2 is a set of IBM LAN and host administration
programs designed to allow customers to extract VM-based directory
information, transmit the data to a LAN which uses either Lotus Notes or
cc:Mail, and update the Notes and/or cc:Mail directory information.

Address Book Synchronization/2 is designed to enable administrators to
update the IBM Mail LAN Gateway/2 with this information. It can be used to
synchronize VM and LAN directories with little or no operator intervention
during off-peak hours.

IBM Mail LAN Gateway/2

IBM also announced that the IBM Mail LAN Gateway/2 product now supports
Lotus Notes. IBM Mail LAN Gateway/2 enables the exchange of electronic
mail between different platforms. It supports cc:Mail, Lotus Notes,
OV/400, the IBM Mail Exchange service offering, Distributed Office Support
System (DISOSS), OfficeVision/MVS (OV/MVS) via DISOSS and
OfficePath/SNADS.

When used together, Time and Place/2, Time and Connectivity/2, Address Book
Synchronization/2, and the IBM Mail LAN Gateway/2 are designed to offer a
solution for customers who want to provide interoperability and
connectivity between both VM host and LAN office function, or provide a
transition for users migrating to the LAN environment.

Current-OfficeVision/400

The Current-OfficeVision/400 Workgroup Program -- a Windows-based
client/server application that provides PC users with an intuitive
graphical user interface (GUI) to OV/400-based office information, along
with an integrated personal information manager (PIM) -- is generally
available two months ahead of schedule.

This announcement, coupled with previous availability of
Current-OfficeVision/VM (OV/VM) and Current-OfficeVision/MVS (OV/MVS),
rounds out the family of Current-Workgroup Programs. Office workers can
now have a consistent look-and-feel across IBM's host and midrange
OfficeVision products.

Electronic Forms Management System/VM

Electronic Forms Management System/VM Version 2 Release 1 (ECFORMS/VM), a
host-based application for creating and processing forms online, offers
user enhancements in performance, usability and reliability. One
significant feature is the ability for integration of ECFORMS/VM with the
in-basket of OV/VM.

ECFORMS/VM is IBM's most powerful, forms-based workflow automation product
to date. By allowing users to design and complete forms online and route
them electronically, it automates many key business processes and reduces
or eliminates paper forms. Users will be able to track processes more
closely, providing a more responsive service to their customers. 

SearchManager/2

SearchManager/2, a client/server application with an object-oriented
graphical user interface for OS/2, offers users a powerful, full-text
search and retrieval solution. It features both standalone and LAN
versions, and supports OS/2 Version 2 and Windows LAN clients.

SearchManager/2 allows users to conduct "linguistically fuzzy" searches and
the product can index, search, and browse (with query highlighting) a wide
variety of international languages and documents. Documents include
WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, AmiPro, Lotus Notes, DATABASE2 OS/2 (DB2/2),
ASCII files and others.

In addition, a supported interface allows customers to integrate
SearchManager/2 with their own document libraries. SearchManager/2 also
offers powerful search and retrieval capability to help users find images,
graphics, voice and video objects via text documents.

Thesaurus Management System for OS/2

The graphical Thesaurus Management System for OS/2 is an online,
object-oriented thesaurus program for the OS/2 environment.

Thesaurus Management System for OS/2 can be used to search for
synonym-related information as well as other types of relations, such as
hierarchical relations (wheel is part of car), associative relations (dog
is associated with pets), and user-defined relations (where the users can
define and customize a thesaurus to very specific needs).

The Thesaurus Management System for OS/2, in conjunction with an
application program, such as SearchManager/2, uses the index to retrieve
and deliver words and phrases to the user. Customers can write to a
supported application programming interface to add thesaurus capability to
their own applications. IBM Programming Systems provides a range of
application-enabling software offerings for application development,
enterprise data and systems management, office systems and electronic
publishing and documentation for host, midrange and workstation computer
systems.

International Business Machines Corp
IBM United States
1133 Westchester Ave, White Plains, NY 10604

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