The rush by proprietary hardware manufacturers to seek to alleviate their problems by diversifying into systems integration looks like a very forlorn hope in the current climate: figures from the Computing Services Association, which claims that its members account for 80% of the UK market, show that employment growth was flat in the first half of this year and are expected to show the first decline since the early 1970s for the third quarter; Kevin Overstall, chairman of Kewill Systems Plc told the Financial Times that of four letters of intent for systems worth over UKP100,000 each signed in April, none had yet been converted into a firm order.
