In an agreement initially worth UKP500,000 ICL Plc will supply the implementation and project management necessary for McDonald’s Corp to extend its hamburger empire further into Central Europe. ICL Services will supply training, project management, installation and maintenance for restaurants in Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. According to Andreas Hacker, managing director for McDonalds Central Europe, ICL was chosen for the contract over the likes of IBM Corp, Digital Equipment Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co because of its strong presence in Central and Eastern Europe and its historic knowledge of the problems associated with trading in the East. ICL has already worked with McDonalds to connect existing local networks within Central Europe sites. It is now set to install wide area networks to connect Hungary and the Czech Republic with the Vienna office through Electronic Mail Links from next month. McDonald’s plans to open 500 restaurants in Central Europe by the end of the decade, a sixfold increase in the 60 sites it will have by December 1994. It plans to invest $500 to $750m in Central Europe by 2000. ICL is obviously keen to maintain a long-term service contract for McDonald’s in the face of such rapid expansion. However, ICL sees the market for hardware in Central and Eastern Europe as equally lucrative. ICL’s contract with McDonald’s involves the supply of its own hardware; personal computers, notebooks and network servers. According to Chris Stahl, vice-president for ICL’s international trade division, central and eastern Europe countries, unlike the rest of Europe, still have a high demand for hardware. He estimates that 80% of the market for hardware in Poland is for personal computers, 70% of which are currently unbranded systems imported from the East which are now lacking the processing power needed to run new applications. ICL therefore sees an untapped hardware market that it can exploit either through distributors or central suppliers. Stahl believes Central Europe is a strategic market with tremendous potential it intends to harness.
