HTEC Ltd, based in Southampton, has bought the Legend Group’s data storage business, also located in Southampton, for an undisclosed sum. HTEC, which started life nearly a decade ago in electronic sub-assembly, had already moved into the viewdata industry in 1986 when it was acquired by venture capital outfit Alan Pafricof Associates. Since then it has moved into the four main areas of telecommunications, data communications, microsystems, and video display. The company’s foundation business is data communications, with its flagship product being the Darwin Series 5000, a networking gateway between incompatible mainframes on a wide area network. The product is not a black box solution, rather it enables users to configure software themselves to communicate with incompatible mainframes. The acquisition of Legend, however, is to bolster HTEC’s growing microsystem division which has products for the gaming industry and satellite TV, such as VME development systems running under OS/9 to collect data from satellite disks. Indeed, the company has recently clinched a UKP2m deal with Granada Group Plc to provide a text service for its chain of betting shops. Legend’s part in this division will be to offer secure removable storage media for HTEC’s products. Products will include removable cartridge Winchester disk drives and subsystems. The SQ555 disk drives are manufactured in the US by SyQuest, but the SQ500 subsystems are made in Southampton. The company’s headquarters will remain in Southampton, where all production will continue to be located.
