The ICL Plc-led Topix consortium has won the contract for the UKP250m five-year Ministry of Defence Corporate Headquarters Office Technology System – not a surprise, really, since the ICL team was the only ones left in the bidding, following the British Telecommunications Plc-led consortium’s withdrawal back in February (CI No 1,611). BT said its commercial interests were best served elsewhere. The other Topix consortium members are BICC Plc, Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte, Data Logic Ltd and Hewlett-Packard Co. The contract is in the form of a fixed price enabling agreement, with the Ministry ordering a system to match the implementation programme for 30 sites throughout the UK. Over 10,600 ICL secure terminals will be linked via fibre optic cable to several hundred HP 9000s and ICL DRS 6000 Unix-based servers – all using a version of Unix System V.4 that has been developed by Topix and has additional security features. Other components include a secure version of ICL’s OfficePower software, and a guard gateway device to secure the GOSIP Government Open System Interconnection Profile-compliant communications.
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