Having fled the volatile US market for the calmer environment in Europe, Datapoint Corp’s John Harrison says the company is now ready to move into open systems. Harrison was appointed president of Datapoint earlier this month, shortly after chairman Asher Edelman took the company off the market and announced that it would be moving its headquarters to Paris, France from San Antonio, Texas. The move to Europe is not suprising. According to Harrison, Datapoint does 79% of its business outside of the US, 40% of it in Europe. And Harrison says that compared with Europe, the Amercian scene is a little too volatile, there isn’t much loyalty to products in the US things don’t change as quickly in Europe as they do elsewhere. Datapoint’s financial and accounting structures will remain in San Antonio and the company will continue to be quoted on the New York Stock Exchange, but the move will enable it to concentrate more clearly on its lucrative European customers. France and the UK represent equal revenue streams, contributing around $55m each to Datapoint’s $267m turnover. That aside, the move to Europe may also be linked to Datapoint’s commitment to all things open. The European market in open systems is particularly fertile, driven by individual governments and European Comission’s drive for standards. Happy hunting ground for a systems integrator bent on offering open solutions, in contrast, says Habrison, to the proprietary systems offered by the likes of IBM and DEC. Accordingly, Datapoint’s server range which forms its main product revenue stream, will now run under Unix and accommodate Oracle software. Harrison admits that Unix lacks functionality, but says that what it lacks in features, it makes up for it in popularity. I certainly don’t see any competitor on the horizon and I don’t see any drop in demand in the near future. Although Unix wasn’t designed for the role that computer buyers have given it, it’s what they want. The essence of the open system – and hence Datapoint – strategy, is in allowing customers to keep whatever hardware they already own, while expanding the network according to their needs. Harrison is confident that the plan will set the company back on the road to success. In December it reported first quarter profits for the first time in six quarters. And without making any predictions for future profits, Harrison said I’m smiling.
