Attachmate to Support Windows Vista with Reflection 2007

Published: December 12, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Attachmate is gearing up for the delivery of Reflection 2007, a new collection of terminal emulators designed to work with Windows Vista. While the new software won't be available until next spring, the IBM connectivity giant is holding an early adopter program specifically for System i and System z shops.

Attachmate is billing Reflection 2007 as its next-generation connectivity product, which means users can expect plenty of changes over existing products, including Attachmate's EXTRA! product line, the INFOConnect product line, and the Reflection line, which were absorbed into the company following the completion of the merger with WRQ in April 2005. Attachmate's roadmap calls for users of these three product lines to upgrade to the Reflection 2007 suite. The upgrades will be free to current users, and existing keyboard maps and macros will be supported in the new release.

The biggest changes in Reflection 2007 concern Windows Vista, which Microsoft officially launched two weeks ago, and which is now available to volume customers. Attachmate, which is based in the Seattle, Washington, area, worked closely with area resident Microsoft in the development of Reflection 2007, the company says, and the product has been certified to run on Vista.

Some of the changes that iSeries and zSeries users will see when the Reflection 2007 early adopter program begins in February are: support for Vista's new "ribbon" interface (although users can elect to use the "classic" interface instead); close integration with Windows and Office utilities like spell check, screen history, auto complete, auto expand, and scratch pad; support for LDAP Directory Services, Microsoft Group Policy, IPv6, Windows Terminal Server, and Citrix MetaFrame; and more robust security through support for SSL/TLS, SSH, Kerberos, and SOCKS security protocols.

Reflection 2007 will also use Attachmate's patent-pending secure token authentication technology, which is found in the Reflection for the Web Security Proxy. Running the Web Security Proxy will offload SSL/TLS processing from the host, thereby saving those expensive CPWs and MIPs for more important applications. Reflection 2007 also meets FIPS 140-2 and Department of Defense Class 3 PKI Public Key-Enabled (PKE) application requirements, opening Reflection 2007's way for use in the government sector.

Reflection 2007 will be Attachmate's second terminal emulation offering to be certified for Vista. The company announced in October that EXTRA! X-treme v9 also was certified for Vista.

While Reflection 2007 is still months away from availability, Attachmate is inviting iSeries and zSeries shops to participate in its Attachmate Vision program, where users will get access to technology previews and pre-release versions of the product. The program for the Reflection for IBM 2007 product is slated to begin in February, while the programs for the UNIX, OpenVMS, and Unisys emulation solutions will begin sometime after that. Interested parties are encouraged to visit vision.attachmate.com for more information on the Vision program.

In other news, Attachmate announced some changes to its executive team. Charles Sansbury, who had served as Vignette's CFO since 2001, has accepted the CFO job at Attachmate. Joining him is Olivia Polius, a 10-year Attachmate veteran, who is the company's new senior vice president of finance. Wayne Crane, previously CIO of NetIQ, has been named CIO for Attachmate, which acquired NetIQ earlier this year.