After 13 years with the Olivetti Group, Carlo de Benedetti says that his company is mastering the crisis affecting the information technology industry. It has emerged as the only profitable, if not the best, European company. An exception in a poor panorama. The cost? 3,000 redundancies in 1990, a further 7,000 this year, and by the the end of 1991, Olivetti will have made a 17.5% reduction in staffing levels. Nonetheless, the chairman and chief executive is proud of Olivetti’s performance compared with those of competitors like loss-making Groupe Bull SA and Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, or Nokia Data and Philips Data Systems which have all but disappeared.
Cresson
De Benedetti can’t be anti-Japanese since his Olivetti Computers arm distributes Hitachi Ltd mainframes in Italy, but he says that Europeans should worry about the Japanese invasion, and cites Fujitsu’s Ltd’s acquisition of Nokia Data as an example. ICL Plc has said that the acquisition is not being financed by Fujitsu, and negotiations were started way back in 1988. Yet, like many a good European, de Benedetti seems determined to regard ICL as a Japanese company, despite the planned UK reflotation when a share price of UKP2.25 is sustainable. At that time, Fujitsu’s 80% stake will be diluted, and perhaps the epidemic of flag-waving affecting Italy and France will then subside. Given Olivetti’s intention to concentrate on retail and banking applications, cynics might be forgiven for thinking that de Benedetti’s hostility to the ICL-Nokia Data deal is based less on fears of Japan, than irritation at stronger and more effective competition. Would the same be true if Bull and Olivetti joined forces? De Benedetti says he has no intention of starting any new initiatives with Bull, and he is vocal on the subject of government funding for industry. Nonetheless, his disapproval of state intervention is tempered by the comment that the French Prime Minister, Mme Edith Cresson, is flying a flag against a powerful invasion on the part of the Japanese. When de Benedetti joined Olivetti in 1977, the company was known as a manufacturer of typewriters, manual not electric. Come 1982, it was making personal computers, although managing director, Vittorio Cassoni, says it was a bit of a false start that wasn’t corrected until 1984. By 1987, Olivetti announced its Open Systems Architecture, OSA, and it claims that the architecture is Olivetti’s distinguishing trait in the open systems world. It is based on four components – Intel Corp iAPX-86 and MIPS Computer Systems Inc for hardware, OS/2 and Unix for operating systems.
Relaunches of the new Olivetti are becoming a regular once-every-five-years event as the company strives to get the right hardware environment for its core product line: in 1982 it was Linea Uno with the Z8000, the 68000 family LSX 2000 machines followed, this time around, it’s all iAPX-86 and R-series RISC. Janice McGinn was on hand to witness the latest unveiling
The Architecture incorporates a number of software packages and offerings from strategic partners. At the same time as Olivetti announced its Pyramid Technology Corp-based computers, the LSX 6500s, and extended its Intel iAPX-86-based LSX 5000 family (CI No 1,686), the company also revealed new agreements with Digital Equipment Corp, Oracle Corp, Informix Software Inc, Bell Atlantic Software Systems Inc and Unix Systems Laboratories Inc. It has a minority shareholding in the last, and Unix System Laboratories Inc’s Tuxedo technology is now available for the development of transaction processing capabilities within the Open Systems Architecture. The agreement with Bell Atlantic enables Olivetti to integrate a Unix System V.4 release of DECnet Phase IV with Open Systems Architecture-based systems, and Olivetti has acquired a five-year licence to DEC’s Enterprise Management Architecture, DECmcc*. Also, the agreements with Oracle Corp and Informix Software Inc mean that Oracle 6.0.31 with a transaction processing option and Informix Online 4.0 will be available on Olivetti’s LSX 5000 un
der Unix System V 4.0. Olivetti intends to concentrate on applications, and its offerings for retail automation are part of this drive. The company says that its retail products have a number of common features including intensive use of local area networks, focus on personal computer technology and compatibility within the Open Systems Architecture umbrella. For the petrol sector, the company has a system called Petrol Platform which runs under System V.4. For the food sector, Olivetti and Ocra SpA, in which Olivetti has a majority holding, have developed Oasis, a turnkey system. As regards banking and office automation, Olivetti offers Personal for Business and IBIsys.
Repository
The first is a layer of products for branch automation and it comprises peripherals, application development tools and value-added services for bank transactions. IBIsys was first announced in 1989 and it is targeted at finance, public authorities and industry. It runs on the LSX 3000, LSX 5000 and LSX 6500 families under Unix, MS-DOS and OS/2, it comes with a number of network services plus Oracle and Informix for database management. Olivetti has made a number of enhancements, and the most recent include image management, expanded configurability at both hardware and software levels, and the ability to program from the workstation upwards. Also, the company has announced Envision, its OSA software engineering tool for analysis and design. It is integrated with a repository and supports a number of development techniques like flow and object-relationship charts, and it enables the user to define methods including Yourdon, SDM and SSADM. Envision is available for multi-user configurations under MS-DOS, OS/2, Olivetti X/OS and Unix System V.4.0 environments. Finally, Olivetti’s attempt to position itself for the 1990s includes a pledge to develop an entry-level workstation based on MIPS R4000 technology and in accordance with specifications announced by the still controversial Advanced Computing Environment.
