In a move to jump onto the Unix bandwaggon as local authorities drift away from mainframes, Ingres UK, C E Heath Plc’s subsidiary Peterborough Software and West Wiltshire Information Systems have got together to push a software package called Interlox. The package offers five interlocking local government applications to deal with the community charge, housing benefits, rents, payroll administration and personnel administration. Under various marketing and development agreements, Peterborough’s Open Door human resource system will be integrated with West Wiltshire’s Interlox system using Ingres for the underlying technology. West Wiltshire currently supplies systems, maintenance and consultancy to over 120 councils and its software has traditionally run on ICL mainframes. However, now that local authorities are having to get competitive and run themselves like businesses, West Wiltshire’s managing director Gerald Garland believes that they will move to Unix because of its lower costs and the way it fits snugly into decentralising strategies. Indeed, Garland said that the Unix revolution will have a bigger impact on local government than the 1974 reforms, which introduced information technology to this sector. Homing in on these changes, Interlox offers applications dedicated to local authority requirements that can run on any Unix platform. While this is all good news for software houses, it may well prove the thin end of the wedge for ICL, which derives a lot of its turnover from mainframe sales to local authorities. Admittedly ICL has its own DRS range featuring Unix, but it seems unlikely that it will retain as many customers via these machines as it has done through its proprietary mainframes. At the risk of appearing to bite the hand that currently feeds them, companies such as Peterborough and West Wiltshire reckon that the local authority market for Unix software will be worth around UKP15m and these two houses have invested UKP1m in research and development to get their products to market. They are also looking for other software partners to help in the development of dedicated applications. Currently under development, Interlox will be marketed by West Wiltshire Information Systems Ltd.
