With its agreement announced on Tuesday (CI No 833) Apricot Computers Plc joins an army of OEM customers that have been signed by Sequent Computer Systems Inc, Beaverton, Oregon. As well as the $50m multi-year contract signed by Siemens AG of Munich in March last year, the company has agreements with business systems builder MAI Basic Four Inc of Tustin, California; test equipment manufacturer Teradyne Corp of Boston; add-on memory and peripherals supplier Amperif Corp of Chatsworth, California; medical systems company CliniCom Inc of Boulder, Colorado; and CLSI Inc of Newtonville, Massachusetts. As well as having marketing rights to the Sequent machines in the UK, the five-year agreement – under which Sequent looks for over $50m of business – gives Apricot’s Financial Systems subsidiary the right to sell the new machines as part of its investment management products in key international markets. Apricot claims the largest installed base of multi-user systems in the UK and to be the market leader in investment management systems for City institutions and has established a Major Systems Division under Peter Thomas, former UK general manager of Altos UK, and Terry Radford, former director of Unisys to market the Sequent systems. Apricot’s new Major Systems Division will have full product responsibilities to support the sales divisions of other Apricot Group companies and the resellers who will be appointed specifically to handle the concurrent computers. Final integration of the Apricot systems will be done at Apricot’s plant at Glenrothes, Fife. Since the launch of its Balance family in September 1984, Sequent claims to have installed more than 280 systems on its own account, and another 400 systems through OEM customers, as well as securing over $200m of future OEM business.
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