Merlin Gerin SA, headquartered in Grenoble, France, terms them ‘the smile insurance’. To others, they are uninterruptible power supplies, which can protect against power cuts but more importantly clean up the everyday supply that is riddled with spikes, surges and voltage sags. Just 6% of installations in the UK use an uninterruptible power supply, which replaces the mains power supply with batteries. The size of the battery determines the back-up period in the event of a power failure. Merlin Gerin is replacing its entire low power office systems uninterruptible power supply range with three new lines, Micropac S, SV and SX. The S range, comprising the S1, S2, S5 and S8, is for use with network stations from all manufacturers. The battery back-up time enables warning messages to be sent from the server to register the number of minutes of local area network operation available. The SV range, SV5, SV8, SV12 and SV15, is designed to protect network servers or multi-user servers in a Unix environment. The UPS alerts the server of a power loss and then warns the users and initiates a procedure to close system files at the end of the pre-programmed time. The SX range, SX300, SX600 and SX1200, protects both programme controllers in industrial environments and network servers or multi station servers in a Unix environment. David Beckett, sales and marketing manager for the power supply division in the UK, says that the stand-alone market has dwindled while the multiuser market has an annual growth rate of 25% to 30%. The fourth product to be announced is the UPS Manager software communications package that works in conjunction with the Micropac series and enables automatic shutdown of both system files and computer system. This facility enables the user to set up the battery time required before the UPS sends the system into automatic shutdown. This package is currently running under Santa Cruz Unix with Microsoft LAN Manager. Merlin Gerin expect to issue a further release of the UPS Manager towards the end of the year that will run under other Unix environments. It is supplied on 5.25 or 3.5 floppy. The Micropac products are available now, but prices are not yet available. Merlin Gerin claim 13% of the international uninterruptible power supply market, currently worth about UKP150m per annum. Merlin Gerin is part of the Schneider SA group, a manufacturer and contractor in the electrical and electronics equipment area and assemblies and general commerce. Groupe Schneider also owns Jeumont-Schneider Industrie SA, Telemecanique SA and Spie-Batignolles SA.
