Cincom Systems Inc is making a determined effort to shrug off the loss of its Net/Master product to Systems Center Inc, and has entered the world of business automation with its Manage:Series package for IBM and DEC proprietary machines, Unix systems and MS-DOS personal computers. Cincom describes it as an integrated set of business components combining data and text processing, archiving and mail. Manage:Series, developed in Europe, is a modular package built on Cincom’s M/Text text processing package. The company has added three other tools, M/Post, M/Archive, and M/Graph. They act as individual applications but may link at any stage of the automation process. M/Text enables users to access corporate data for the creation of documents, mailings, and text manipulation. It integrates with word processing packages, with Mantis, Assembler, Fortran and Cobol, and with relational databases. The mainframe version runs under MVS or DOS/VSE. M/Text PC is the personal computer version and enables the user to offload work and to move data between the mainframe and micro. M/Post is an electronic mail facility that integrates with M/Text and distributes documents and information either locally or globally. It provides full screen editor, message editor, input and reminder boxes, and file folders. M/Graph PC integrates images and text with M/Text documents, as well as mainframe and micro-based computer-aided design packages, and it interfaces with personal computer scanners. M/Archive is a storage and retrieval system that finds and saves documents on a user-specified basis. Cincom says that Manage-Office is the first integrated multi-environment system available, and the company is keen to add to the existing DEC, Unix, personal computer, and IBM offerings. The Manage:Series costs from UKP2,000 and UKP150,000 and will be available next month.
