After 10 years, Data General Corp is still transitioning from a proprietary mini-computer vendor to an open systems house, but after reporting its fourth profitable quarter on Friday, the company may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. In the third quarter – traditionally its weakest – the Westboro, Massachusetts firm reported a small profit of $7.1m against heavy losses of $61.4m in the same period last year. The company put those losses down to the $43.0m restructuring hit it took following the axing of 600 jobs in April last year (CI No 2,647), but that figure was offset by a $44.5m pre-tax gain from the settlement of a software lawsuit against
Northrop Grumman Corp. In the quarter Data General saw revenues increase 15% to $323.2m, helped by increased product sales, up $24.7% to $224.1m, while service revenues fell 2% to $99.1m. The Westboro, Massachusetts company expects profits to increase when sales of its Intel Pentium Pro-based enterprise servers pick up later this year; already about 37% of its revenues come from its Intel-based AViiON servers. For the nine-month period, Data General reported net profits of $18.2m against a loss last time of $48.2m on sales up 16.4% at $986m. Data General formed two new business units during the quarter: the NumaLiine unit to forge OEM relationships and worldwide distribution partnerships for its Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) server technology, and the THiiNLINE Internet Appliances unit to promote its Internet access terminal concept over the next year (CI No 2,935).
