Army's and National Guard's new multiuser system uses VirtuOS^TM Platform

"Because SPBS-R is a high-profile, heavy-utilization application, requiring a high degree of dependability and security," Boyle continues, "we conducted an exhaustive evalution of multi-user operating systems to identify the most reliable yet economical platform that could meet our tight deadline."  Because a singleuser MS/DOS system had already been developed, one of the criteria for the multiuser operating system was MS/DOS compatibility. "We wanted to minimize cost and downtime, while at the same time providing the room to grow," states Project Manager Dick Weis, who coordinated software evalutation for the project at two sites: Development Center/Fort Lee (DCL) in Virginia and Development Center/Fort Huachuca (DCH) in Arizona.  "At first, we considered developing a UNIX system," DCL Program Specialist Bill White states. "But we were concerned about the learning curve and hardware investment associated with UNIX."  "We also looked at Windows," White continues, "but we realized we would have more capability under a virtual machine environment that provided MULTITASKING and MULTITHREADING capabilities."

Following a desktop analysis of a dozen products, two operating systems were selected for on-hand testing. "We took our single user MS/DOS platform and laid it down on two boxes, running two terminals off of each box," White explains. "Both vendors came in and set up their software. Within a couple of hours, we did a test on most of the functions in our system on the Microbase platform."

Similar testing was also conducted at DCH, where VirtuOS^TM was loaded onto a file server connected to 8 different smart and dumb terminals. "I was surprised how easy it was to install the VirtuOS operating system and to invoke the multiuser environment," comments Mike Nance, system Engineer for SPBS-R at DCH. "We had no problems at all with it operating 8 separate terminals off of one host PC." The other product didn't perform as well. In addition they discovered that the other product required an expensive interface for each terminal, whereas VirtuOS^TM may use serial ports to set up multiuser terminals against the host.

Because it runs on any 386 or 486-based machine, compatibility with a wide variety of hardware platforms is one of the key attributes of VirtuOS^TM. "The ability to use existing hardware was very important to us," White explains. "With VirtuOS^TM, we weren't required to invest in massive RAM and DASD upgrades or 2,000 multidrop serial boards. Being able to use the serial boards on the PC to tap into the server saved us considerable expense and time."

Upon completion of the project, the Army will be using about 3,000 copies of the VirtuOS^TM operating system on a wide range of different hardware platforms. This is possible because VirtuOS has an extensive capability in configuring the machine that lets users address just about every resource, including COM-boards, modem-lines and serial connections.

"VirtuOS' MS/DOS compatibility was another factor in its favor," White states. "The fact that the VirtuOS^TM kernel stands alone and comes with a MS/DOS-compatible interface, in addition to its own native interface, appealed to us."

VirtuOS^TM also met the criterium of providing room to grow. "With VirtuOS^TM," White states, "we're ahead of the game because we've got all the software that we need to take care of any of our plans for the future. They've anticipated the needs we might have." Although the main requirement was multiuser functionality, if in the future White wants to build a LAN or WAN that capability is already built in the VirtuOS^TM operating system.

In fact, Weis and White are experiencing unanticipated benefits from VirtuOS' other capabilities such as multitasking and multithreading. "As we become better educated in the use of the product," Weis explains, "it gives us the opportunity to process information much more efficiently than we've done it in the past. We can run our huge executables in the background and then go into another process on the same machine, which will make it quantumly more efficient for our customers."  White agrees: "By using the multitasking capability, I've been able to double my productivity."

Another unanticipated factor in the success of the conversion was the level of customer support that Microbase provided. "We were going to a new operating environment and had never had the application run in a multiuser fashion before," Weis explains.

"Because of our file structure and our ignorance of the capability of the operating system we got into a situation where we were creating access contingence in the files. Most of the problems came from the unfamiliar nature of the task at hand for the development community, which is typical when you are changing operating systems or platforms.  So, anyone who is doing this type of conversion should look for someone that will offer an extraordinary level of customer support. It saved us a tremendous amount of time and I couldn't even begin to estimate the time and money that Microbase saved us on the conversion by providing us with ongoing customer support."

NOTE:
This text fully reproduces a press release issued, with the authorization of the U. S. Army, by:
CATALIST Marketing Services
21800 Dumetz Rd., Wookland Hills, CA 91364.