Boston Business Computing Ltd, the Andover, Massachusetts-based company that brings VMS emulation features to Unix, has signed Digital Equipment Corp software house Essential Computing Ltd, Clevedon, Avon, as its master distributor in the UK. Essential will serve and support the existing half a dozen or so dealers, resellers and system integrators that already offer Boston Business’s software in the UK. Boston Business is using the UK as a test case, and says that if all goes well, similar deals will be struck on the continent. Three years ago, 90% of Boston Business’s business was on MS-DOS systems, 10% on Unix: that’s all changed now and the company says that MS-DOS now accounts for just 20% of its revenues. Boston Business welcomes DEC’s latest OpenVMS initiative for its proprietary operating system, because it keeps VMS alive, (and therefore Boston Business in business). However, it’s not only VMS-on-Unix software that Boston Business Computing offers: the VMS editor, mail system and back-up utilities are also available on proprietary Data General Corp, IBM Corp and Prime Computer Inc PrimOS environments. SunSoft Inc Solaris and Microsoft Corp Windows NT will follow too. As yet it has nothing to offer ICL Plc users that want to retain their VMS look and feels, but Boston Business president, David Pikcilingis, and director of marketing, Edward Gaudet were in the UK last week to try and convince ICL there is a market for VMS emulation software on the company’s Unix-based hardware – and to lend Boston Business some DRS machines to convert to. Founded in 1983, privately-held Boston Business has 15 employees, claims some 20,000 users of its software worldwide, and expects to do around $2.5m this year. Essential Computing is a two-year-old nest of refugees from Zeta Systems Ltd and turned over ?500,000 in its first year. Essential’s David Stokes looks for the seven-employee company to double effort that this year.
