Madrid-based MD Integracion de Sistemas SA has taken over where McDonnell Information Systems Plc left off in Spain, as it aims to become an all-round systems and services provider. Managing director of the new company Angel Porras told Computerworld Espana that when the deeply disappointing and under-achieving McDonnell decided to concentrate on its business in the UK, the US and Australia, abandoning its operations in the rest of Europe, a group of people that had been employed by the firm in Spain opted to set up a new firm to continue working with McDonnell’s customer base, as well as make inroads into new market areas. Thus we have taken over almost 100% of McDonnell’s former maintenance contracts with clients in Spain, we have signed a new distribution contract for McDonnell’s tools and we have forged several other agreements with companies already operating here, Porras said, adding that the business which MD Integracion de Sistemas inherited served as an effective cushion while the start-up looked for other market openings. The main areas in which MD is currently engaged are systems communications and integration, document management and data acquisition. The company also offers tools for migration from proprietary environments to open systems, notably UniDATA and Universe relational database managers which enable transparent migration from Pick to Unix, and Cobol Direct Connect, a system facilitating migration of applications developed in Cobol. MD intends to cover the complete migration cycle, from prior consultancy through to training, installation and start-up. With respect to the main agreements signed so far, MD has called on Sun Microsystems Inc, Motorola Computer Group and Data General Corp in the areas of applications development, training and maintenance. MD Integracion Sistemas currently employs a staff of 15, most of whom were previously employed by McDonnell Information Systems, and Porras anticipates revenue of between $3.9m and $4.7m for fiscal 1996.
