Compaq launches ground-breaking remote access range

Compaq has announced a move into the remote access arena with the launch of a range of remote access servers. The company maintains they are the first remote access products to be based on open standards technology, because they are based on Intel microprocessors and Windows NT.

Ian Whiting, business unit manager for Compaq's Communications products group, said: "It's not fully open, but supporting Intel and Microsoft gives us a huge pool of applications to draw upon."

Whiting argued that all other remote access servers are proprietary and so Compaq's new range will allow network managers greater freedom than they had before. The servers will be initially support ISDN but will be enabled for ADSL early next year.

Also launched were a range of Gigabit Ethernet backbone products targeted at organisations using large groupware applications like SAP's R3.

Whiting admitted that Compaq will see little return from these products for at least 6 months, but is confident that the technology will be widely adopted in the end. "It's too early to say how fast the market will grow, but by early 1999 it will explode," he said.