Latest entrant on the office automation scene is Workhorse Systems Ltd of Dublin, Ireland, which is set to launch its integrated management office automation system at Uniforum in February. The Unix-based Workhorse product incorporates all the standard packages that are now expected from office automation, such as word processing; database facilities; spreadsheet; diary; and electronic mail, as well as additional software that is intended to help the user manage his day. Tasks which are performed by more than one person are passed from one user to the other once the first has completed his part of the job and messages are left on users’ screens, in priority order, telling them that they have got these tasks to perform and that they are waiting for someone else to finish doing another before they complete the job or continue with it. The software is written in a supereset of C that the company calls S2 and describes as a fourth generation-type language. The product is aimed specifically at 80386-based machines because that is the smallest machine with sufficient power and storage for the product: at least 1.5Mb memory is needed. One flaw in the system is that full text retrieval in not available but Wokhorse says that this will be available when the standard for optical disk drives settle down. A C-ISAM interface will be incorporated during the second quarter this year. Although the company will only start shipping its product within the next couple of weeks, at an expected entry price of UKP2,500, it was actually formed in 1985 when development work started. The privately funded company was backed by CitiCorp but the founders retain control. A US office is planned some time this quarter and the comp.cw 8 any is also looking at developing an OS/2 version.
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