As reported briefly, Digital Equipment Corp has won a $20m contract from the Polish State Railway to supply it with its first computer system (CI No 2,332). This will be used to manage the organisation’s freight business, the aim being to make it more competitive as Poland moves to a market economy. The railway has ordered two Alpha 3000 series 800 boxes for applications development, two Alpha 7000 servers to handle disaster recovery applications, and 36 dual Alpha 3000 series 800 regional servers. The systems all run OpenVMS and will be linked by an FDDI and X25 wide area network. They will be installed at the head office in Warsaw, at regional offices, and main railway stations and yards across the country over the next two years. DEC says it won the contract against competition from IBM Corp, Unisys Corp, and Compagnie des Machines Bull SA.
