Comparing TED to standard workstation vendor CDE offerings is like comparing Adobe photoshop with Microsoft Windows standardardly configured paint program. This is what you don't get with standard CDE products offered by the workstation vendors:
Appendix B: TED vs. Vendor CDE Technology
TED is a comprehensive desktop for the enterprise market. Some of the major
hardware vendors provide a CDE implementation for their respective operating
system environments. TED surpasses the capabilities of vendors' CDE
implementations on several grounds:
1.Ubiquity
2.Desktop functionality
3.Enterprise support
4.Customer/market-driven solutions
5.Standards compliance
6.Core CDE performance
Ubiquity
Clearly, TED is the leader in providing multi-platform support. TED 4.0 is now
available on IBM AIX, HP-UX, SunOS, Solaris, UnixWare, SINIX, IRIX, and a
variety of X-terminals, including NCD, Tektronix, and HP Panacom. No other CDE
vendor has attempted to provide a CDE implementation on these platforms.
TED's first and foremost benefit is that it is implemented simultaneously on these
platforms, allowing customers to have a single CDE implementation "synched" on
every platform. This is an increasingly important issue as customers attempt to
maintain consistency across multiple platforms. Tracking and updating software to
reflect the most recent OS version can be a consuming task. TED makes this easy.
Desktop functionality
TED starts with 100% of the features and functions of CDE. TED also provides core
enhancements and desktop services, intended to complement the suite of productivity
tools in CDE. Core enhancements include:
Graphical Workspace manager
Key bindings
Multiple front panel and screen support
Workspace menu enhancement
Mail tool editing enhancement
Auto login and session save
TED Desktop services are fully integrated desktop applications. This means that they
support drag-and-drop, copy and paste, and they interact seamlessly with other TED
applications and features. These desktop services included in TED 4.0 are:
TEDVISION
TEDFAX
LOCALTED
WINTED
TEDSECURE
These core enhancements and desktop services are detailed further in this document.
Enterprise Support
Enterprise support cannot be limited to one platform. TriTeal's position has always
been that of an independent software vendor, supporting all platforms uniformly.
Hardware vendors by default support only their own, which limits the customer's
ability to solve enterprise wide problems.
TriTeal maintains an engineering and technical support staff who are trained in
cross-platform issues. The company has an extensive support structure to ensure
enterprise technology solutions and system integrity.
Customer and Market Driven Solutions
TriTeal's experience as the exclusive support organization for many UNIX hardware
vendors helped to cultivate a customer and market driven approach to solutions.
Customer involvement is implemented in every step of TriTeal's development and
delivery process.
In contrast, desktop technology deployed by hardware vendors do not employ the
same market-driven requirements planning. As a case in point, the single most
common (and undisputed) requirement is for the desktop to be ubiquitous, that is
multi-platform, so that it may in fact serve the entire enterprise. This requirement is
simply not aligned with a hardware vendor's objective, i.e. to sell more hardware.
Standards Compliance
TED is the first CDE implementation that has gained the X/Open Company Ltd.
brand for CDE. This means that TED has 100% compliance with the CDE 1.0
specification. TriTeal's commitment to leadership in the standards arena illustrates the
fact that hardware vendors are less likely to deliver state of the art technology to the
market as quickly as a software-only company does.
Core CDE Performance and Implementation
A competitive matrix is available as a supplement to this document. |
