Integralis Ltd of Bracknell, which was set up on December 1 1988 has received backing from venture capitalist 3i in the form of loans and equity to the tune of around UKP200,000. The company describes itself as a computer integration and networking consultancy and was established by four senior executives from the UK side of the US local area networking company Ungermann-Bass, including Ian Calcutt, ex-technical director of Ungermann-Bass who is now the managing director of Integralis, and Martyn Webster, ex-financial director at Ungermann and now financial and administrative director of Integralis. Over the past 10 months during which Integralis has been in operation it has won two exclusive dealerships: it is the sole UK dealer for NetWise Inc’s NetWise software tools and for Touch Communications Inc’s OSI range of products. NetWise enables programmers in a distributed environment to write applications across many different platforms by linking the programmer into a library that compiles the necessary code. For example, using the tools a programmer could write an application in which the graphics element could run on a personal computer while the number crunching could be done on a Cray supercomputer with a DEC VAX acting as file server. Integralis is selling this tool into large corporates with multi-vendor applications. The Touch products, on the other hand, are for a much more specialised market, since they offer the programmer the ability to write applications on top of the basic Open Systems Interconnection stack of code. On the whole Webster says that Integralis is selling these products to computer manufacturers and integrators which are buying it to help integrate their personal computer cards into the open system environment. There is, however, also a tiny end-user market of programmers wishing to play around with the new OSI technology. As a consultancy Integralis specialises in the integration of personal computers with DEC VAXs, and its target market is large corporates with complex networks which can be made to communicate with each other via Open Systems Interconnection and TCP/IP. At present Integralis is not involved with the implementation of complex IBM SNA networks but this may be a market it will have to consider in the future. At the moment it is negotiating with both NetWise and Touch to do development work for them in the US so that their products can be implemented on new hardware. The resulting enhanced products would then undoubtedly help Integralis to expand its business in the UK and the continent.
