While Data General Corp made a net loss of $63m for fiscal 1992, the company maintains that it has been through the worst in its transition from proprietary to open systems, and is now seeing considerable growth in demand for its high-end multiprocessor AViiON servers. First quarter profits, while down a drastic 80% compared with the same quarter last year, at least showed a profit of $800,000 (CI No 2,091), notching up the company’s second profitable quarter in a row and making six profitable quarters out of the last eight. A further 1,400 jobs were cut last year, bringing the total headcount down to 7,100, from a 17,700 peak in 1984. A significant milestone has been that product revenues for the AViiON line finally surpassed those of the proprietary Eclipse MV products. In 1992, AViiON revenues exceeded $300m, a 43% increase over 1991. MV revenues decreased 42%, compared with a 17% decrease between 1990 and 1991. It means that – aside from service revenues – Data General is now more dependent on open systems than proprietary business. In the UK, where Data General has just re-vamped its sales channels, AViiONs now outsell Eclipse systems by 5 to 1. Data General claims significant demand for its top-end 4 and 8-way Motorola 88100 servers, and says it is selling one of its CLARiiON RAID disk storage sub-systems with just about every eight-way machine that goes out the door. The company remains tight-lipped about the launch date for its long-awaited Motorola Inc 88110 RISC upgrades to the AViiONs, which it apparently has ready to go in the labs. It also has some integration work under way, designed to tie in its servers more closely with the workstations from NeXT Computer Inc, following the reseller agreement announced last year.
