Prime Computer Inc and British Telecommunications Plc’s Dialcom Inc subsidiary in Rockville, Maryland have, as reported briefly (CI No 1,039) announced a worldwide co-operative effort to offer the Natick minimaker’s machines bundled with Dialcom software which was written to run on Prime 50-series minis – as a turnkey electronic messaging and information system for large organisations. The first phase of the effort will involve joint marketing of Dialcom’s PathFinder System software with the Prime minis, initially in the US, the UK and Australia. The PathFinder System on offer provides an in-house system to handle local and global messaging, providing internal X400 message switching between networks of dissimilar computer systems, and access to the growing base of business and government users of the X400 message-handling standard. The PathFinder system also provides access to the Dialcom – formerly Telecom Gold over here – public services, including telex, fax, information databases and other vendors’ proprietary mail systems. Users access Dialcom and licensee services – via its decidedly hostile user interface with personal computers or terminals over local or international public data networks. A second phase of the Prime/Dialcom effort will cover joint development of a gateway product, allowing access by any Prime user to Dialcom’s value-added network services. Dialcom plans to market future Prime products, such as those providing document conversion facilities, to its customers worldwide, and the two companies are expected to share information in areas such as Electronic Data Interchange and directories for message systems, using the emerging X500 standard.
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