A briefing on the future strategy of the Thorn Ericsson joint venture in London yesterday turned out to be an outline of L M Ericsson’s future strategy – which, guess what, is based on integration computer processing power and communications throughout its entire product range. The UKP3,000m a year company reckons it has three cornerstones – communications, ergonomics and integration. It sees its future in corporate communications where anyone can access information in any department within a company. Ericsson intends to reach this goal based on what it terms the Copernican Revolution where the end-user is the centre of development and not the data processing. With 11.7m office workers in the UK, each with a phone on their desk, it reckons development will be in the voice and data integration area. However it realises the problems it faces in bringing the two together. The diverse qualifications required to work in either sector were obvious but, says Ericsson, job adverts are calling more and more for people with skills in both areas. Companies are rightly worried about losing their existing investment and have to carefully weigh up the cost benefit of sharing information. Uncertainty about future integration of products is another stumbling block. Ericsson believes the IBMs, AT&Ts and ICLs of this world will address the problems sometime in the future by working jointly with telecommunications companies. It claims it can solve them today because of its expertise in both areas. In the words of Ericsson Information Systems’ UK marketing director, Peter Spalton: We can compete against Japan Inc and we can compete against America Inc. Ericsson already has its MD110 voice and data switch installed in three UK sites, and has it on trail in a fourth.
