Industry giants unite in global Net training plan

Netscape, Sun, Novell and IBM have announced plans to form a worldwide Internet training and certification consortium.

The vendors will retain their existing training frameworks, but will offer a joint accreditation scheme for technical support providers and channel partners. Consortium representatives plan to appoint a third-party member to carry out the programme on their behalf.

No details have yet been released by any of the vendors. But they say the consortium is still an open one and they plan to invite other industry players to join.

Netscape and Sun have announced plans to collaborate further, with the promotion and marketing of Sun's Web NFS Internet file system, which will be included in future versions of Netscape Communicator client software.

The two companies have also promised interoperability between Sun's Joe connectivity software and the Netscape open network environment, and will work together to create a common set of APIs. Contact www.internet.ibm.com/partner.

Sun says it plans to introduce Cray Supercomputers as part of its standard range of servers.