Norsk Data Group executive vice-president Tor Alfheim readily admits that he may be too old to relish the prospect of a revamp of corporate strategy on the scale that Norsk Data Group A/S has undergone in recent years, since the decision to move into Unix was made. But with yesterday’s announcement of the minimaker’s interim figures that included a return to pre-tax profits for the first time in two years, Alfheim may be quite justified in saying that he at last feels that its strategy is in now place and no radical changes of direction will have to be made including no more job losses. Pre-tax profits for the six months were at the equivalent of $495,000, a turn around from last time’s losses of some $40m – still not good enough, observed Alfheim, but a return to profitability achieved much sooner than most of our followers would have thought. At $201m, revenues for the first half were up 10% on last time, but still significantly down on the kind of business the Norwegian was doing two years ago at the height of its success. Since then, Norsk Data has completely restructured its operations to separate its private sector, local government, central government and graphics businesses and has been pushing for a slice of the appealing systems integration market. Actual product sales rose by 22% in the period, with revenues from maintenance declining in importance accordingly; revenues from standards-based as opposed to proprietry products stand at around 40% of turnover, with sales specifically from Unix up to 25% of the total and growing – this compares favourably to the 10% of total sales from Unix that Data General, which has also tried to take Unix on board, is currently managing. All Norsk’s traditionally strong markets did reasonably well – sales of Unix computers were particularly strong in the Norwegian market, which still accounts for over half of total revenues, while revenues from computer-aided design applications for the mechanical engineering sector, including the new Technovision system, were the strong point in Germany. Norsk Data UK was still finding it hard going, and expected the market to get even tougher in the second half; managing director Geoff Webster was left with the hope that the UK arm would escape most of the negative effects of a depressed UK economy because it did not rely on big contracts or defence for its source of revenues.

East Europe

Norsk had concluded several distribution agreements in East Europe, but like most was treading carefully until it was sure that the Eastern Europeans had the money to back up orders. Norsk’s 70%-owned subsidiary Dolphin Server Technology A/S, which has attracted some investment from Norwegian and Swiss sources, saw sales of its high-end Unix servers pick up from March, and is expected to break even next year. As for its goal of becoming a bona fide systems integrator – therefore avoiding the margin pressure that it, along with just about everybody else is experiencing – Alfheim had to admit that Norsk was still not quite there, and was still on the look-out for any kind of partnership that could help it in this direction. He believes that Norsk Data has bitten the bullet – for Alfheim, it was just as well it came quick and hard – and is convinced that the group is now fit for the fight.