A new company, Datasolve Computeraid, has been formed within the Thorn EMI Computer Software group to focus on offering companies value added services in the workstation management market. The new company is composed of a merger between Computeraid, Datasolve Micro (both of which have expertise in supplying micros and peripherals) and the maintenance company Computeraid Services. The company is based in Farnborough, Hampshire, as were the three companies from which it was formed, so there has been minimal staff disruption during the restructuring. The buzz phrases within Datasolve Computeraid are that its employees are dealing with the human interface of commercial applications and will be acting as surrogate data processing managers. Roughly translated from the latinised English of which professionals are so fond, this means that Datasolve Computeraid intends to trade on qualities such as warmth, friendliness and understanding. The merger has given Datasolve a more cohesive approach so that it can now tackle workstation management from systems consultancy through hardware and software supply, the installation of sys tems, training, hardware maintenance, software support, and systems and network management to project management. It feels that it can come in to a company at any stage in the development of its information technology and sort out communications prob lems among micros linked to mainframes, or in local area or wide area networks and offer a coordinated strategy. As far as Data solve is concerned the keys to this type of strategy are train ing, for which it has classroom facilities as well as computer based training packages, and the ability to implement the latest releases of operating systems and application packages throughout an entire network. At the moment the company is looking to two main types of customer. Consequently, the sales team has been split between major accounts, which numbers Marks & Spencer, The Prudential, Midland Bank, Thomas Cook, and Equitable Life among its customers, and vertical markets such as the finance, retail and government sectors. Datasolve Computeraid says it will pursue a consultancy-led sales approach, but as it is an IBM and Compaq dealer the term consultancy is not used in the context of providing an independent evaluation of a customer’s needs; although to be fair, most of its major clients are likely to be IBM users anyway. As for software, the company is weighted towards MS-DOS networks, but marketing manager Brian Watts be lieves that there may well be a move towards open systems among its major accounts in the near future. Datasolve Computeraid currently has a turnover of approximately UKP20m and intends to grow its workforce by about 30% to 450 over the next year. It enters into fierce competition with P&P and ComputerCentre clai mimng that it alone has the necessary expertise to provide total data processing solutions at the workstation level. – Katy Ring
