After announcing initial details in August last year, MBS Plc and Motorola Computer Systems have at last made their commercial distribution deal official. A new MBS division, Life Systems (after the US Motorola brand name standing for Linked Information Environment) has the exclusive commercial distribution rights for the Motorola 8000 Series of Unix supermicros in the UK technical and industrial business is handled by Thame Microsystems, Oxfordshire. Martin Dean, sales and marketing manager for Life Systems says that the company was looking for between 40 and 50 resellers by the end of the year, and so far has appointed six. The most recent, Warrior Systems of Peterborough, says it expects the deal to be worth ?350,000 in end-user sales. Although largely addressing the same market as the Altos Computer boxes sold on by MBS’s Microtex division, Dean says that the distinctions of Unix System V.3, and the Motorola based VME architecture will open up new sales, especially with developments in the Motorola line on the microprocessor front. MBS had an early 68030-based Series 8000 machine, the Model 8430, at its hospitality suite booked out for prospective resellers at the Which Computer? Show. The company says it is only looking for active value-added reseller partners, which it will back up with marketing and technical support. Meanwhile, those of Motorola’s existing 10 or so resellers that handle the 8000 Series will be transferred to the control of MBS, leaving Motorola to concentrate exclusively on system building. Life Systems currently employs 11 people at its Ascot, Berkshire offices, and expects this to rise to 18 by the spring. Separately, Motorola has combined its board-level and systems level groups in the UK, in an effort to provide a better service to its OEM customers who buy both board and system level products. Previously, VME boards were handled by the Semiconductor sector in the UK, although in the US boards and system sales have been integrated for some time.
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