Pyramid Technology Corp has announced a corporate roadmap for enterprise client-server computing – a general five-year game plan outlining what it hopes to achieve over the period and the company, long a wallflower, is finding new favour on Wall Street. Pyramid says the new brief will help customers meet their long-term computing requirements – and, it hopes, plan lots of Pyramid purchases. The Mountain View, California-based firm says over the next two or three years it will develop what it calls massively scalable processing technology – multiple parallel systems working together to boost overall performance rather than multiple processors working in parallel. Its DC/OSx implementation of Unix System V.4 MP will get more reliability, availability and serviceability features along with a graphical administration system and more automated management capabilities. Next-generation Pyramid machines will include power-on service and replacement features for main system resources that the firm hopes will increase on-line reliability and the rest. Systems will come with built-in configurable redundancy and visual management tools – clustered systems will be optimised for client-server arrangements. The goal is to double processing power every 12 to 18 months and tooffer as close to linear performance scalability as possible. New Terabyte-class mass storage subsystems will be offered – with 3.5 drives – along with new controller technology and more independent parallel channels. On software, Pyramid says it will team with leading providers in six markets which are key to its business – financial, telecommunications, transport, catering, health care, maufacturing and government. Pyramid sees a future where operating systems and relational databases are increasingly bound together and hardware systems optimised to run them. It says it will improve facilities integrating legacy systems with new client-server technologies and will offer new one-stop support services. Pyramid has recently introduced ServiceExpert, a continuous monitoring and analysis reporting system for its systems. Meantime Kemper Securities raised Pyramid shares to a strong buy from long-term buy: it sees a strong new business picture with significant expansions in order levels. The shares are currently at $20 and change but Kemper’s 12-month price target on the stock is 30.