It has been Burroughs’ year in South Island

Press, 17 December 1985, Page 32

It has been Burroughs’ year in South Island

Two major computer orders in Christchurch recently for Burroughs give that company the right to claim 1985 as Burroughs’ year in the South Island. Appropriately the two sales are largely the result of the availability of LINC, the Christchurch-developed fourth-generation software product. Both Canterbury Frozen Meat, and Gough, Gough and Hamer, have decided that LINC is the best development tool available on the market The companies will be using LINC to replace applications currently running on other suppliers’ hardware. C.F.M. was the first to sign with Burroughs. Its pair of ICL computers are due for replacement and the company is planning a major expansion of its data processing operation. After a year of evaluating systems, Gough, Gough and Hamer announced its intention to buy a Burroughs ASF mainframe last week, in a deal worth over ?1 million. Now using an IBM 4331 computer, Gough, Gough and Hamer was faced with a complete overhaul of its computer operations because of the age of its existing hardware and software.

The company had developed a nationwide on-line network in the early 1970 s

based on printing terminals. These terminals have reached the end of their life and it was impractical for Gough, Gough and Hamer to enhance the software to support visual display units.,; Rejecting another IBM mainframe because of the number of staff required to manage it, Gough, Gough and Hamer looked at IBM’s System/38 computer and at LINC on a Burroughs computer. A package was available from Caterpillar in the United States for the System/38, but Gough, Gough and Hamer, the New Zealand Caterpillar dealers, did not find it suitable for the local operation. In a straight shootout between the System/38 and LINC, Gough, Gough and Hamer chose LINC as, in its opinion, the most productive alternative, according to Mr Greg Thompson, information services manager, for Gough, Gough and Hamer. The Burroughs ASF, with 12 megabytes of memory, will be installed in about three months time and the network should be running on the new machine by early 1987. There will be 62 visual display units in the network ana 20 terminal printers. Gough, Gough and Hamer will be the first Christchurch users of Scope, a set

of financial applications written in LINC by the Dunedin company Allied Computer Processors, Ltd. According to Mr Thompson, the sale was helped along by Mr Peter Hoskins’ knowledge of the company. Mr Hoskins, one of the two developers of LINC, worked at Gough, Gough and Hamer before he left for Saudi Arabia. It was in Saudi Arabia that Mr Hoskins and Mr Gil Simpson conceived LINC. ~

Mr Ross Campbell, Burroughs’ sales manager in Christchurch and the account representative for Gough, Gough and Hamer, admitted to being “very excited about the prospect of replacing a competitive supplier.” “I see it really as a further expansion for Burroughs in New Zealand and the South Island and obviously an endorsement for LINC,” he said. Mr Campbell also sees the sale as an opportunity for Burroughs to impress other Caterpillar dealers.There are about 800 Caterpillar dealers worldwide. The two sales are also welcome news for Burroughs’ new general manager in New Zealand, Mr Brian Clark, who took up the position recently on his return from the United States after two years at Burroughs headquarters in

Visiting Christchurch last week, Mr Clark was in good spirits aftr receiving an order from the Auckland Savings Bank for the largest computer processor ever sold in New Zealand, a $6 million Burroughs Al 5. The ASB’s new computer replaces two Burroughs 87800 computers. Mr Clark is predicting a 70 per cent increase in sales revenues next year for Burroughs New Zealand but admits to being concemd with what the company will follow up with in 1987 after that growth in orders. Mr Clark was involved with the early days of LINC in his position of marketing manager for Burroughs at the time.

By the time he moved to Detroit the LINC rollercoaster had started and the “not invented here” resistance that affected its acceptance in Detroit had died out. “Right from the top of the company down there is a clear recognition of the strategic importance of the product,” Mr Clark said. Asked if there is any competing product within Burroughs, Mr Clark noted that a product being developed at the same time as LINC died away when LINC was introduced. “The corporation has decided that LINC is the only product it is going to develop,” he said.