UK trade newspaper Computer Weekly hears that British Telecom has rationalised its Common Office Automation System for Telecom – COAST – project, and downgraded estimates of its original UKP100m cost, following its decision back in June to look to outside suppliers for the hardware. The paper says that an operational requirement for the revised BOAT project – hard to fit intelligible words to that unless it means that another British Telecom computing project is up the creek without a paddle – makes cost savings by making use of Telecom’s existing computer resources, but still aims at providing electronic mail, word processing, spreadsheet and database facilities for up to 20,000 British Telecom staff. Added to the original list of Sun, ICL and Pyramid as potential suppliers are Siemens-Nixdorf, Bull and Hewlett-Packard.
