ICL officially opened its new Network Applications Business Centre at a press conference at Velizy-Villacoublay in France yesterday (CI No 641). The new centre is headed up by ex-Control Data manager of mainframe systems in France, Philippe Galais. It will be run as three divisions, the first concentrating on viewdata servers, the second on X400 for worldwide messaging systems and the third on network architecture, incorporating local area networking, PABXs and X25 links. Initial emphasis will be on viewdata systems, and ICL aims to be employing 50 people next year. It is drawing on parent STC Plc’s’s 1,000-strong Network Systems division, which it now manages, to run the new operation. The newventure is part of ICL’s promise at the Sicob exhibition in Paris in the spring to increase revenues that it garners from outside the UK, and particularly in continental Europe so as to give its operations a genuine pan-European dimension.
