Reflection 8.0, due March 1, allows terminal emulation between Windows clients and a variety of host systems, letting desktop users access data via their PCs from IBM AIX, OS/400, and OS/390 servers, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX systems, Sun Solaris computers, Compaq Tru64 and OpenVMS hardware, and Linux machines.

"Unix is the backbone of the Internet, and it's experiencing growth," says Dave Herbert, group marketing manager at WRQ. "The power for companies is in their legacy data and integrating it with desktop applications like Microsoft Excel."

The upgrade adds support for Windows 2000's Active Directory, which lets managers control host access according to group policies from a central management console. Compatibility with Microsoft's directory service also enables remote distribution of software to PCs and offers support for users who need to access network data from multiple locations.

"It's so well-integrated into Windows 2000; we have less integration to deal with ourselves," says Timothy Lessance, VP of IS at Dubuque Bank And Trust in Dubuque, Iowa.

Starting at $132 per seat, Reflection 8.0 sits on the client side and communicates with the applications server through Microsoft's Winsock application programming interface.

Also scheduled to ship March 1 is WRQ Reflection for the Web 3.0, which includes a thin Java client for deployment on Windows, Macintosh, or Unix workstations. It's priced at $199 for one concurrent license or $115 per named-user license.