National Australia Bank is funding further development of Computer Power Group Pty Ltd’s Today Advanced Development Environment to the tune of $8.25m – $Aus11m. The investment is the first to be made by the bank under the new Research and Development Syndication initiative introduced by the Australian government last September, which gives big tax breaks for such investments. The bank gets a direct equity investment in the enhanced product and the cash will be invested in development over three years. Computer Power has already spent $3m on enhancing Today since it acquired it in 1988, and wants it to play a major role in the IBM AD/Cycle software development environment. In the development plan are the addition of industry-standard user interfaces, expert system features, and Distributed Architecture Processing capabilities.
