Telepartner International Ltd, based in Windsor, Berkshire in the UK, has unveiled Synchrony, a client-server electronic software distribution package for automatically installing or updating programs and data in a single session on remote MS-DOS and OS/2 personal computers and laptops from an IBM MVS mainframe server environment. The software, which is usually run unattended overnight, automatically reports back with any installation problems. It is also used for data collection and subsequent distribution of output from mainframe applications. The MS-DOS or OS/2 end of Synchrony, which was written originally in assembler code on a workstation but has been rewritten in C, is currently installed in two test sites, one an undisclosed insurance company, the other Cadbury-Schweppes Plc. In the former case, some 3,000 mobile salespeople will benefit from the system, at night plugging their laptops into the a phone link to offload the data on to the mainframe for overnight processing, while in turn downloading the results of the previous day’s analysis. In the case of Cadbury-Schweppes, the part of the company responsible for installing Coca Cola and confectionary vending machines in the UK will use Synchrony for order input. Telepartner International was formed in February, as Farmington, Connecticut-based Packet/personal computer merged with its Nordic distributor, Oslo-based Telepartner A/S. Barry Ashdown, who heads the operation in the UK, came to Telepartner from his UK company X.Com, which he sold out last year to Telepartner A/S. Telepartner, which retains its European headquarters in Norway, will sell its Synchrony product direct, starting at UKP50,000 and ranging to UKP100,000 for an MVS site with several thousand personal computers or laptops. A Unix version is planned though Telepartner is unsure which version it should adopt.
