The UK expert systems company Expertech Ltd., which is based in Slough, Berkshire is looking for expansion in the world market for artificial intelligence. It has kicked off its imperial plans with the recent acquisition of Intelligent Systems International Ltd, previously based in Redhill, Surrey. Expertech is known for its expert system shell Xi Plus, an end user product that runs applications from individual micros, and which has done well in the European market. Intelligent Systems on the other hand is a small company built up through the marketing of its high-end Egeria tool, which is used by professional programmers adopting object-oriented techniques. The two companies will now be run together, and work is underway to integrate their products through the design of similar interfaces so that, for example, menus and options will appear the same to both developers and end-users. In this way Expertech hopes that its corporate clients, which are present in a range of vertical markets from banking to engineering and manufacture, will use the two products in combination, with Egeria acting as the delivery vehicle and Xi Plus enabling the user to acquire the expert knowledge. The two products will, however, also be available individually. At present both Egeria and Xi Plus run in the MS-DOS and VAX/VMS environments, while Egeria also runs under OS/2 and Unix. The next generation of Xi Plus will, however, be compliant with Systems Application Architecture, as befits its status as a product for IBM hardware. Meanwhile, Egeria is designed for ICL hardware. Consequently, Expertech is spending the next 12 months or so developing the two products so that they can be used in combination by corporate clients with either IBM or ICL hardware. As regards the Waltham, Massachusetts company, AICorp, which is in the process of announcing a big push into the European IBM market with its expert system building tool KBMS as well as with a new micro based package, Expertech is not unduly concerned. It points out that it already has the requisite language versions, as well as the support and distribution channels up and running in Europe. A parting shot from Expertech’s chairman was that he is now looking for a major US acquisition in expert systems.
