The phrase "Information Superhighway" is well known to people in the business of high technology. Back in the 70's when the threat of a nuclear holocaust was a real possibility, this network of heterogeneous systems was developed for the Department of Defense as a means to distribute data amongst various sites and locations. At the time, few people expected this "Internet" to become a living and breathing entity that would soon take on somewhat of a life of its own.

As the popularity of the Internet grew, a little known company called Delphi took the lead, becoming the only major online service to provide full access to the Internet along with news, sports, weather and user chat services. Rupert Murdoch and the people of News Corp. recognized the potential of the Internet and purchased Delphi. Known worldwide for his ability to turn opportunities into successful new business ventures, Murdoch had a vision of turning the Internet into a brand new, consumer focused vehicle for communications.

Delphi customers connected to the service (which was maintained on a VAX cluster at the company's home office in Cambridge, MA.) via X.25 and Telnet TCP/IP. Once connected, they used GOPHER and FTP to "surf the Net" to Internet sites around the world. Over time, as Delphi's customer base grew, so did its VAX cluster as well as the need for more reliable, efficient and cost effective TCP/IP. According to Rod Shepardson, Delphi's VMS System Manager, the TCP/IP software they were using on their cluster was expensive to maintain and was not very VMS friendly. He saw a major problem with the need to reboot the system every time we made a configuration change. "What we needed was an OpenVMS TCP/IP package that would give us more flexibility, was easier to use and was more cost effective", noted Shepardson. At this point, Delphi's cluster consisted of a few mid sized VAX machines, but as their user community fast approached 100,000, the need for larger higher performing machines was imminent. Rod needed to make some big decisions on his choice of TCP/IP software.

"We liked TCPware from Process Software for a number of reasons," reflects Shepardson. "TCPware is a more VMS friendly product. It's very flexible and easy to use in a VMS environment, the set up is in tune with VMS; it has more of a VMS look and feel". Shepardson also noted that Delphi's engineers also liked the fact that they could turn TCPware on and off without having to reboot the entire system. "A reboot for us means a disruption in service and in this business, that can be catastrophic". As a result, Delphi chose TCPware as its TCP/IP protocol for the evolving cluster. Every few months, Delphi adds new machines to its cluster, creating a need for more TCP/IP software.

Delphi's experience with Process Software's technical support team was positive as well. According to Shepardson, "From time to time some of our customers would wander into a site using a stray version of TCP/IP that didn't follow the rules and wasn't of the same quality as TCPware. As a result the data didn't flow freely from that site back to our customer. Process's technical support was able to trace the problem back to its source, locate the vendor of the sub-standard TCP/IP, and explain the problem to their own technical staffers. They're that dedicated to finding the solution".

When asked if he would recommend TCPware to anyone who needed TCP/IP for their VMS machines, Shepardson quipped, "TCPware has performed well for us and anyone considering OpenVMS TCP/IP should take a good look at it!".

Note: Just prior to the printing of this profile, Dan Bruns, the former CEO of Delphi purchased the company from News Corps. Rod Shepardson is remaining with News Corp. as their Systems and Network Manager.