James Allchin, who later worked as Group Vice President for Platforms at Microsoft until his retirement on January 30, 2007, was the chief architect of Banyan VINES.
Like AARP, VINES required an inherently "chatty" network, sending updates about the status of clients to other servers on the internetwork.
With StreetTalk's inherent low bandwidth requirements, global companies and governments that grasped the advantages of worldwide directory services seamlessly spanning multiple time zones recognized VINE's technological edge.
By the late 1980s, the US Marine Corps was searching for simple, off-the-shelf worldwide network connectivity with rich built-in email, file, and print features.
By 1988, the Marine Corps had standardized on VINES[2] as both its garrison (base) and forward-deployed ground-based battlefield email-centric network operating system.
Using both ground-based secure radio channels and satellite and military tactical phone switches, the Marine Corps was ready for its first big test of VINES: the 1990-1991 Gulf War.
Ground fire support coordination agencies used VINES up and down command channels—from Battalion-to-Regiment through Division-to-Corps and Squadron-to-Group to Aircraft Wing-to-Corps, as well as in peer-to-peer unit communication.
This allowed 3+Open to work with a wider range of network devices and systems, increasing its compatibility and appeal to a broader audience.
3Com's contribution to Microsoft's network and server software capabilities is closely tied to their collaboration on the development of LAN Manager.
This version of LAN Manager incorporated technologies from both Microsoft and 3Com, resulting in improved networking capabilities and compatibility.
While seeming to ignore VINES, Novell and eventually Microsoft—companies with a flat server or domain-based network model—came to realize the strategic value of directory services.
Active Directory features an additional capability that both NDS and VINES lack, its "forest and trees" organizational model.
The combination of better architecture and with marketing from a company the size of Microsoft doomed StreetTalk, VINES as an OS, and finally Banyan itself.
By the late 1990s, VINES's once-touted StreetTalk Services's non-flat, non-domain model had lost ground to newer technology, despite its built-in messaging, efficiency and onetime performance edge.
Banyan increasingly turned to StreetTalk as a differentiator, eventually porting it to NT as a stand-alone product and offering it as an interface to LDAP systems.