With mesh fine as the nets on a Spanish fishing trawler, Platinum Technology Inc is hoovering up all the fish great and small it believes it may need for its Open Enterprise Environment strategy and the latest catch – no less than the eighth on its current fishing expedition, is Locus Computing Corp, Inglewood, California. The Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois company has agreement in principle to acquire Locus for $33m in new shares. Platinum looks to Locus to provide its customers with one of the highest levels of consulting and technological talent needed to develop and improve distributed computing within the Open Enterprise Environment – which it categorises as including MVS, Unix and Windows, with perhaps VMS, OS/400 and OS/2. Locus is styled the largest independent provider of open systems software consulting services to the industry, emphasising cross-system implementations. The other seven either just bought or in process of being acquired by Platinum are Trinzic Corp, Answer Systems Inc, BrownStone Solutions Inc, SQL Software Corp, Viatech Development Inc, Autosystems Corp and RelTech Group Inc.
