This week, Hewlett-Packard Co is expected to get its reward from Tustin, California-based MAI Basic Four Inc, which last spring signed for $7.5m of HP 9000 Unix machines (CI No 1,411) to create turnkey systems running its Manbase manufacturing resources software. Hewlett-Packard sources say the hardware deal will be worth $250m over three years and is one of several the company has won with old-line computer manufacturers running down their proprietary machines – hard on the heels of the original MAI order came one from McDonnell-Douglas Information Systems Inc worth 10 times as much – $75m (CI No 1,412). MAI also takes Sequent Computer Systems Inc’s multi-processor transaction processing machines OEM (CI No 1,448).
