The contributions provide an overview of research in tele- communications and distributed systems. The main part con- concentrates on the evaluation of the CCITT recommendations and ISO standards with respect to OSI and ISDN and user ser- vices. It also reviews new applications that are becoming a- vailable in modern offices, manufacturing, and the public domain. Different approaches are discussed as to how these applications can be builtmore easily with advanced program- ming rools. Deals with operating systems support for commu- nication systems.