The dependence of Amdahl Corp on mainframe hardware is rapidly diminishing now, and the company took another big step in its transformation yesterday when it announced its second major computer services acquisition within the past year. This time the company is privately-held Trecom Business Systems Inc, the first was DMR Group Inc, the Canadian company for which Amdahl paid about $139m last autumn after getting into a bid battle with IBM Canada Ltd. It is paying $145m cash for Trecom, half now, the balance one year from now, which should still leave plenty in the kitty despite plans to spend $100m buying in its own shares – Amdahl had $530m net cash at the turn of the year. Born in 1985, $140m-a-year Trecom employs 1,700 at bases in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Washington and Texas. It claims to have been growing an average 40% a year for the past three years, majoring on systems integration, with skills covering everything from databases and warehousing to object technologies, and has turned Year 2000 date conversion into a specialty. After it becomes part of Amdahl, Trecom will retain its name, but its methodologies will be adopted by the other service operations; once it has Trecom under its belt, 60% of Amdahl staff and over half its turnover will be in software and services. (Also see our News analysis section for a closer look at Amdahl).
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