Although Pyramid Technology Corp rivals Sequent Computer Systems Inc and ICL Plc bested it in International Data Corp’s latest report on midrange – $100,00 to $1m – market shares, Pyramid claims its last three sales have all been valued at over UKP1m and that a new high-end category of measurement is required. It says an average sale is now a UKP300,000 box with six CPUs and that it is focused almost exclusively on the mainframe market space, not departmental sales. Last year Pyramid teamed with Comdisco Inc and Compagnie des Machines Bull SA to address the mainframe sector, a relationship it believes has already netted UKP10m sales for Pyramid UK. Meanwhile, part of Pyramid’s agreement to supply bus and operating system technology to ICL Plc calls for the Fujitsu Ltd-owned UK firm to market Pyramid boxes on an OEM basis. Pyramid says ICL is keeping up its end of the deal and has already sold several MIServer systems into its traditional markets: the arrangement should be worth at least 50 systems over time. ICL already has engineers camped at Pyramid labs in Oregon working on a Sparc implementation of the Pyramid bus. Pyramid estimates its OEM customers have probably sold as many systems as itself over time: the Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG and Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA deals are worth some $25m a year, it says. Kobe Steel Co in Japan and Korean firm Hyundai Electronics Co are its other partners. Steve Reeves, director of UK sales will be taking on more duties in that market, as UK managing director Ken Jacobson focuses increasingly on Europe. Jacobson plans to go after new OEM and reseller arrangements on a country-by-country basis, especially in markets that aren’t currently well served by high-end Unix vendors. Jacobson has three outlets lined up in France and will soon announce an OEM deal that will see Fujitsu Ltd sell Pyramid kit in Spain, where the Japanese firm has a large presence. Most of the UK income comes from direct sales, up to 35% is OEM-derived. On the continent as much as 60% of income is supplied by third party vendors. Pyramid claims UK sales of its commercial multiprocessors are already 70% up on this time last year, a figure that should climb to 100% by year-end. The company, which only recently returned to profitability, says it should hit $240m to $250m this financial year. Pyramid claims to have won two multimillion dollar European government contracts that are to be announced in three or four weeks’ time. One has been put together with Electronic Data Systems Corp, the company that runs Pyramid’s in-house management information systems.
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