Harris Corp, Melbourne, Florida has finally thrown in the towel on its venerable and shrunken computer business, and is to follow the lead of Perkin-Elmer Corp with Concurrent Computer Corp and spin the Fort Lauderdale company off. Harris plans to distribute shares in a new Harris Computer Systems Corp on a pro rata basis to its shareholders, and says the divestment will have no material effect on Harris Corp’s earnings for fiscal 1994 or subsequent years – sales at the company are now only $60m a year. Courtney Siegel, 43, now vice-president and general manager of the Computer Systems Division, will serve as its chairman, president and chief executive. The company is presently part of the Harris Electronic Systems Business Sector. The separation is subject to final approval by the Harris board and, if approved, is set to be completed in September, when the new company will apply for a listing on the NASDAQ National Market System. The company’s Night Hawk high performance real-time and multi-level security symmetric multiprocessing systems are built around the Motorola Inc 88110 RISC, but Harris is moving to the PowerPC and has been working with IBM Corp to put Unix System V up on the IBM RS/6000s. Electronic Systems including computers currently accounts for 34% of annual sales of about $3,200m, semicon ductors for 19% and communications for 17%; the Lanier Worldwide office equipment accounts for 30% of sales.
