Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG’s subsidiary in the UK has set up a separate business unit to concentrate on mid-range systems, reflecting a similar move made by its German parent company last year. Siemens Nixdorf UK hopes the new division’s focussed approach will lead to a increase in its sales of between 30% and 35%, which compares with the 50% growth rate achieved by the personal computer when that was split off in June. The Mid Range division will deal with both proprietary machines, such as the Quattro successor to the Nixdorf 8870, and the Unix-based RM family, which together generate about 15% of total UK turnover – about 80% of this comes from Unix, the rest from upgrades to proprietary systems. Siemens Nixdorf UK’s biggest market in terms of volume is the central government, followed by retail and financial ser-vices, but it also intends to recruit small value-added resellers to help it break into other vertical sectors, such as health care and housing associations. Meanwhile, it says its new MIPS Technology Inc R4400-based RM400 and RM600 servers are now shipping. The uniprocessor RM400s are intended as workgroup or departmental machines for between five and 100 users, and range from 8,000 to 60,000 in price for an entry-level system, going up to 250,000 for a top-end box. The multiprocessor RM600s are designed as large departmental or enterprise-wide servers supporting between 100 and 1,000 users. Entry-level systems range from 40,000 to 120,000, while the top-end model comes in at 400,000. This family will be enhanced at the high-end by the middle of this year to include a 24-way machine with 1,024Gb of disk and 4,096Mb of memory. The new model will include double central processing unit boards still based on the R4400, which are likewise claimed to double its performance.
