Once the market leader in Unix office automation, Quadratron Systems Inc, based in Westlake Village, California, has sold the rights to further development and maintenance of its source code to its UK arm, Quadratron Systems (UK) Ltd of South London. Quadratron UK has been carrying out most of the work for the last two years, but now ownership of source code and rights have been transferred in what is described as a major asset transfer. A holding company, Quadratron Systems International, is currently in the process of being set up with support from international Quadratron distributors. No further details were given. The US arm is expected to continue acting as an agent for the products, but to take no further part in its development. Quadratron introduced its Q Office product suite in the mid-1980s, aiming it at the OEM market. Companies such as Sperry (now Unisys Corp), Nixdorf (now Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG) and Northern Telecom Ltd re-badged and re-configured the product as their own. Quadratron UK managing director David Johnston says that OEM customers demanded a modular, configurable product, which stood the company in good stead over the ensuing years, opening up a demand for integration services that survived the market shift towards new generation software. Both Quadratron and arch-rival Uniplex Ltd mis-judged this shift towards personal computer productivity packages, graphical user interfaces and client-server working, and both announced their own new generation products years before they were deliverable. Quadratron’s Cliq was finally delivered at the tail-end of the 1980s – still character-based, but according to Johnston pointing the way towards Windows, desktop-driven type of products. Quadratron is re-positioning Cliq as a niche product for integrating sets of tools, applications and databases together, combined with process automation and Quadratron’s integration and consultancy services. Users include National Westminster Bank Plc and Abbey National Plc. For the future, Project Saturn – or Cliq 3 should emerge in alpha test versions by the end of the year, with final product that will ship sometime next year.
