With the purchase of Cambridge-based Torus Group’s assets from the receivers, Telemetrix Plc is presen-ting its Trend Datalink networking products and services division with a network operating system and related hardware to complement Trend’s already comprehensive range of networking equipment. Clearly, Telemetrix has faith in Torus’ Tapestry II local area network operating system for OS/2 and MS-DOS, but according to Telemetrix chairman Roy Cotterill what Torus lacked was the ability to make the product pay – the 83 employees previously at Torus were, in Cotterill’s words clever but without business sense. Business sense is what Telemetrix, which itself drew benefit from a white knight intervention by South African Allied Electronics Pty Ltd in May 1988 (CI No 923) hopes to teach Torus, with the first move being to get rid of the tripartite corporate structure that Torus has been unsuccessfully attempting to get right since last summer (CI Nos 1,254, 1,281). Torus Systems, Torus Network Products and Torus Technology, which were separately responsible for the Tapestry operating system, networking hardware and software development respectively, will now work as one team comprising the 46 Torus staff that Trend has decided to retain. Cotterill reckons that UKP6m-a-year Torus was simply not large enough to support such a structure, and argues that the return to a single, tight unit is the classical approach to networking. The new Torus – to be known as Torus LAN Division – will operate with a smaller software development team inside Trend Datalink under the eye of Trend managing director Arthur Fisher. For Fisher, one of the first things that needs looking at is the actual marketing of Tapestry. For the market, Torus decided to split the product into Tapestry II Enterprise for large installations, and Tapestry II Office for companies with less than 50 nodes – as it transpired, most customers opted for Tapestry Enterprise in the end regardless of network size – if Trend decides to keep the Tapestry Office version, Fisher reckons it is likely that it will be scaled down in size to make the distinction between the two more marked. In addition, Fisher is promising a new version of Tapestry in the next few months that will be capable of running applications such as Windows. These, it seems, are the main changes that will happen to the product that made up around 80% of Torus’ sales: the OS/2 LAN Manager element of Tapestry, which several months ago was simply left on the shelf by many small Tapestry users, is to be kept as part of the product. One of the most interesting aspects of the deal is the number of relationships now possible between Torus’ distributors like Skytech Ltd and Ferrari Plc, companies with whom Torus has OEM deals – among them ICL and Olivetti – and Trend Datalink partners and sister companies within Telemetrix. Already, the German arm of the Telemetrix terminal division Westward has voiced its apporval of the purchase and is keen to start selling Tapestry in Germany. Trend has the UK distributorship for David Systems’ ExpressNet local area network equipment – Fisher sees no reason why Skytech and Ferrari couldn’t engineer similar, complementary deals with David Systems. On a wider scale, it has not gone unnoticed that Torus consistently did around 40% of its business abroad – this means that Torus’ presence on the continent and in places further afield such as Australia and Japan could also act as a springboard for Trend’s international ambitions. On paper, and given Trend’s ability to solve the cash problems and lack of business acumen that finally sunk Torus, the deal could mark a significant step towards Trend’s stated objective of being an international networking facilities management company: if this is the case, Trend can pat itself on the back for picking up a bargain. – Mark John
