ICL Plc, poised to jump on the 80486SX bandwaggon later this year and with a self-designed laptop up its corporate sleeve, has been briefing the press on what it sees to be its major achievements in 1990, and outlining the company strategy for the coming year. Surprising as it may seem, for a company recognised largely for its mainframes, 50% of ICL UK’s total 1990 revenues were derived from software and services and less than 30% of sales figures were contributed by mainframe hardware. Linda Francis, ICL’s Unix Systems Business Manager, was the first to translate her percentages into sterling, boasting that Unix system sales accounted for UKP80m of UK revenues which, she was quick to point out, was four times the value of Bull SA’s 1990 Unix business. A quarter of Unix shipments were made through ICL’s value-added reseller channels, and in the UK, ICL claims an installed base of 3,000 Unix systems. Sales of the DRS 6000, said Ms Francis, exceeded all expectations with over 1,500 worlwide shipments – the UKP9m contract with the Ministry of Social Security (CI No 1,616) being among the company’s recent coups. The DRS 3000, she went on, has been having early success: recent contracts signed include hospitals in Greece. ICL claims to have taken 20% of the mid-range market – machines in the $15,000 to $500,000 bracket – in 1990, according to Inteco figures, compared with just 4% stake of the market in 1989. The company has deduced that it is growing at twice the market rate and therefore gaining substantial share from its competitors. Reasons for the market’s confidence in ICL are undoubtedly caught up with the company’s new-found long-term financial security from Fujitsu’s majority holding. ICL’s Unix strategy for 1991 includes rationalising towards two base architectures Sparc RISC and Intel iAPX-86, and conformance to Posix and X/Open. DRS 6000 system developments will focus on the upper end of the market – the two-processor Level 65 model is due out this month and further versions will ship later in the year, in conjunction with memory, disk and back-up facility enhancements. So too will DRS 3000 enhancements will be in the realm of disk capacity, as well as communications, and new models at the top end of the range are scheduled for the second half. Peter Slavid, the newly-appointed business manager for VME mainframes, reported that UKP60m orders were received in 1990 for the new SX (Essex) system, and small SX models are planned for the current year. Major developments in systems software are also scheduled, mainly in taking VME into the open systems world. According to John Arnell, UK business manager for personal computers, recent International Data Corp forecasts that the market for 80386 machines is being squeezed out – so that’s why ICL doesn’t have one. And Arnell claims that ICL currently has the leading 80486 box in the UK – no dates were given for the release of ICL’s 80486SX box. Something that ICL has kept very quiet is that it has been assembling some of its personal computers in the UK for some time now – by the end of 1991, says Arnell, 50% of ICL’s manufacturing will be UK-based. Further details were not disclosed, but ICL is planning to make an announcement in six weeks’ time. Of the planned laptop, he says that the company wants a clear ICL product – ICL badged the Zenith products for a while, but the company now wants to design its own product – to be built externally at first, with the eventual intention to take production in-house.

No pressure from Fujitsu

Optical disks are also scheduled for later in the year. Two of ICL’s major vertical markets for personal computers are local government and education, and Arnell indicated that a launch in the latter sector is planned for next month. Some 60% of ICL’s business is currently generated in the UK – the plan is to reduce this percentage to 50% – the balance is split 50/50 between continental Europe and the rest of the world – figures on which ICL was unequipped to elaborate. In 1989, ICL shipped UKP130m-worth of workstations and personal compu

ters abroad, for which the company gained its Queen’s Award for Export Achievement. On Fujitsu, Peter Slavid, who until recently was responsible for setting up business relationships between ICL UK and the Japanese company, was adamant that the takeover had made very little difference to the operation or business of the company. The two main areas of impact, he said, have been in providing ICL with long-term financial security and the ability to become a Plc again – ICL plans to float on the stock exchange within the next five years. Fujitsu, according to Slavid, does not impose itself on ICL at all – going back to Seagate winning an ICL award for its disk drives (CI No 1,658), he says, Fujitsu could encourage us to buy its own products, but there is no pressure at all. If anything, he concludes, customer confidence has increased, particularly in these times of recession, and ICL has been picking up market share from smaller companies with less financial security.