For Western capital, social and political revolution in Eastern Europe is lifting the floodgates to new markets and economic opportunities on an unprecedented scale. The information technology industry by its nature has always been quick to recognise potential in and take advantage of new markets, especially in the advanced industrial nations. The latest company to turn its attention Eastward – and in a prime geographical position – is West Berlin-based Unix software specialist UniWare GmbH. In conjunction with East Berlin-based VEB Leitzentrum fr Anwendungsforschung – or Lfa – it is setting up a joint software development and marketing firm which will offer open systems products and services in both East and West Europe. VEB is the East German equivalent of a public limited company, and it will be up and running by the end of this month according to UniWare’s Nico Klauke. Known as GKI – or Gesellschaft fur offene Kommunikations und Informationssysteme mbH, the new company’s first presentation will be on the UniWare stand at the forthcoming Hanover Fair. Although under present CoCom rules Unix cannot legally be sold into the Eastern Bloc, UniWare, like other hopefuls, reckons that CoCom’s regulations will have to be altered in the near future. The jointly-owned GKI will be headquartered in East Berlin with offices in Leipzig and Schwerin, having limited liability according to the laws of East Germany. Headed jointly – and with equal voting rights – by Lfa’s Helmut Grutzbach and UniWare’s Hennig Wilke, it will develop and market new UniWare applications and training services for Eastern Europe – Klauke reckons there are around 7,000 Unix systems in East Germany, mostly cannibalised from ancient Western hardware – as well as for the European Community countries. UniWare will supply most of the software and marketing experience, Lfa the development and resources. VEB Leitzentrum fur Anwendungsforschung, with 600 employees – 420 of whom are involved directly in software development – operates out of offices in East Berlin, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Leipzig and Schwerin. It offers CAD/CAM, communications, software design, data processing and office automation implementations, as well as training and maintenance to government data processing departments across East Germany, where its software is used in financial and administrative tasks. Under its roof a Unix users and system developers group has been established – the Entwickler und Anwendergemischaft Unix-kompatibler Systems, EAG – led by Helmit Grutzbach. Lfa is the Unix software subsidiary of parent Kombinat KDV which has 12,000 employees throughout East Germany, second in size only to VED Kombinat Robotron, the largest and best known computer manufacturing outfit in the Republic. Klauke insists that a fuller picture of GKI’s future and the relationship of East Germany’s information technology industry with CoCom will not become clear until after the Democratic Republic’s general election on March 18, which will raise the phoenix of a reunited Germany – provided West Germany’s Phosphorus Chancellor, Helmut Kohl manages to control his expansionist ambitions – Alsace-Lorraine next perhaps – and doesn’t say anything else to persuade the rest of the developed world to decide that German unification – at least under Herr Kohl – is really not at all a good idea after all. Under the West German constitution every district of East Germany can apply for annexation to the Federal Republic. If this happens, districts formerly in the Democratic Republic that become part of West Germany will fall under CoCom’s rules governing Western European nations, thereby lifting current restrictions on the import and export of technology to East Germany. We hope to have a full report on the kind of Unix systems and software currently used throughout Eastern Europe over the next few weeks.
