EIT Group Plc, the Reading shell company with the ambition to build a big computing business by acquisition, has launched a new version of the message switching technology originally developed by its Intercom acquisitions. Office Link was originally and rather idiosyncratically distributed only in Holland, Germany and Portugal, so that few people in the UK have come across the software-hardware combination that works as a store and forward message switch linking telex, facsimile and electronic mail to local and wide area networks, plus X25 networks. At UKP10,000 for an entry-level system, an Office Link version 2 installation is not cheap, but it is aimed at the corporate user with a large messaging requirement. It has the capacity to drive up to 34 lines and 254 simultaneous users. At its simplest level, the box allows users to feed sheets into a fax machine and forget about them. At a more sophisticated level, the box enables interconnection between Telex, facsimile and local area network mail packages. Furthermore, electronic data interchange or mainframe applications can be accommodated by the use of specially written external communications modules which plug into the core software. Unfortunately, the local area network electronic mail is restricted by the requirement for EIT’s own electronic mail package to be used on the networked personal computers. This means that favourite packages have to be jettisoned if users want to access the fax or telex mailbox. Aware of this shortcoming, sales director Keith Yaxley says that a module compatible with Novell Inc’s Message Handling System will be released shortly. Once available, it may be possible for Office Link to be configured MHS compatible electronic mail systems will be able to address mail to, for example, a mailbox called fax with a number attached. Faxes that contain graphical material are still tricky however, and currently, incoming graphical faxes can be viewed using EIT’s own specialist viewer, but external utilities have to be used to convert the CCITT T4 format information into the more useful PCX or TIFF. Once again the company says that this facility will arrive shortly. Version 2 builds on the earlier release, not only in its ability to handle incoming graphic faxes, but it adds full logging of messages sent – not just the source and destination, but the entire text. The decision to seal the software within its own customised 80386-based box is new. Previously Intercom sold the software only. Three months ago, chief executive Mike Burden suggested that he was months away from a deal with a major Unix developer. Since then nothing, but sales director Keith Yaxley says that the company is still looking to acquire an application provider – almost certainly within the next six months. But, with four companies already subsumed into the EIT structure, adding any more would seem to be an organisational nightmare. However, if Yaxley is to be believed, all is sweetness and light. Indeed the combination of the four has led to the elegant sales ploy of simply cross-selling between customer bases. We have 6,000 customers in the UK and all of the Times 1,000, says Yaxley, who enthuses about the way products from one part of the company can be sold to customers of another.
