The effort by management of Prime Computer Inc’s core computer business has failed and the company has decided to close the business, once one of the most successful of the clutch of second-line US minicomputer manufacturers. The company says the attempt at a buyout failed because the managers realised that it would take longer than they had planned to develop a new generation of the 50 Series minicomputer line. The decision means that 300 to 400 more people will eventually lose their jobs, although the company plans to continue offering support to existing users through its PrimeService business. Already over 400 people have been shed since the beginning of the year, and the Prime Computer Inc that is going public – on revised terms, see page seven – and will change its name to Computervision Corp, will end up with 5,900 people, and annual sales of some $1,200m, mainly computer-aided design software and maintenance. The computer unit that is being closed had sales of just $169m last year, down from about $1,200m at its peak, shortly before Prime completed a hostile takover of the original Computervision company back in early 1988. Prime was born in the early 1970s, structured around the PrimOS operating system, which was developed on Honeywell Inc minicomputer hardware under a government contract, which meant that when people on the development team wanted to take it into the commercial world, they were able to buy the operating system for a nominal sum, and developed a new processor optimised to run it to create the 50 Series, the customer base for which will now be subject to a flock of companies wanting to win users over to their open systems. Prime’s Natick, Massachusetts headquarters has been sold by Carling Park Trust to Watertown, Massachusetts-based Boston Scientific Corp for $26m, a medical instruments firm that will use it as its own headquarters and second manufacturing base. Prime is now headquartered at the old Computervision base in Bedford, Massachusetts. Prime was brought low when to escape a hostile bid from MAI Systems Corp, it agreed to one of the last – and most doomed – leveraged buyouts in the computer industry by a group led by J H Whitney & Co, just before the boom fell on such transactions, which saddled Prime with a debt burden that at the time looked unsustainable – as it has proved.
