ACT Group Plc’s BIS Banking Systems Ltd, with its eye on the services market, is broadening its existing software maintenance operation. The new offerings range from disaster recover to technical and functional health checks. At the same time the company is introducing service-level agreements with financial penalties where it fails to deliver on time. BIS Banking, based in Wimbledon, currently makes annual sales of around UKP18m on the maintenance of its Midas banking software. It believes that the launch of the new Vantage service will grow this to about UKP21m in the first year of operation. Existing users at AS/400 installations get moved up the new Entry Level service automatically, at no extra cost. For the company to make substantial amounts of new money, it will need customers to upgrade to the more advanced Support Environment package. BIS’s own research shows that 20% to 25% of its customers will switch. Around one third of its users are barred from Vantage since they are still running Midas on System/36s or System/38s.
