TOKYO (12-04-95) - In coming weeks network hardware vendor 3Com Corp. will announce plans to offer network adapter cards bundled with the Netscape browser and with whiteboard technology from PictureTel Corp.
In addition, the company plans to incorporate Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java technology with its Transcend network management software, said Eric Benhamou, president and CEO of 3Com, in an interview last week.
Java, a network-centric object-oriented programming language, can be used to write small applications, or applets, that can be distributed over the Internet and that can run in clients equipped with a Java interpreter.
"We'd like to be able to integrate a Java interpreter into Transcend in such a way that we could add a series of network management tools as applets [that] we would make available on our Web server for all our customers to evoke at any time," he said.
3Com, now negotiating with Sun, expects to finalize its Java plans in the first half of next year.
In the meantime, 3Com expects to make product support easier by bundling its adapter cards with Netscape Communications Corp.'s browser and Picturetel's whiteboard, he said.
The whiteboard feature will enable users to collaborate with 3Com technicians on a common document in real time, while the Netscape feature will let users way access technical information on 3Com's Web home page, he said.
"We'd like to be able to see it as part of our support package, in other words," he said. "We'd like you to buy this product also, which will dial our home page automatically and you will be able to have access" to 3Com technical information, he said.
[Copyright 1995 IDG News Service, International Data Group Inc. All rights reserved.]