Amdahl Corp has dropped its T1 Multiplexer line, X25 switching devices and other communication equipment in a rationalisation of its data communications operation. According to Electronic News, the company has made substantial investments in an attempt to expand its share of the communications market, but the results have been disappointing. It says that it will no longer sell its 4400 Series Networks Concentrators, the T1 Multiplexers and the Digital and Communication Service Unit internal modem line. The rationalisation has involved 175 redundancies at the T1 facility in Mississauga, near Toronto, and the remaining 50 employees are to support the existing customer base. Amdahl is now notifying customers that its packet assembly-disassembly device and T1 multiplexers are being discontinued due to deteriorating sales, but the company insists that it will continue to sell Fujitsu’s 4745 front-end processors and the 2700 series of local and wide area networking systems. Communication products are said to represent only 3% of Amdahl’s sales, and most of that is derived from the front-end processors. Amdahl’s 10-year involvement in communications has been chequered, and it began with the $27m acquisition of Tran Communications Corp, based in Marina Del Ray, California. That company developed and marketed the 4400 concentrators, the T1 multiplexers and X25 digital packages, and it was regarded as a strategic acquisition that would enable Amdahl to link its mainframes with multi-vendor equipment. However, Electronic News quotes an Amdahl spokeswoman who now says that many companies are better able than Amdahl to link networks at remote sites over a central network. The company tried to boost its network sales by splitting the combined peripherals and communications operations into two groups and establishing Communications Products as part of the Communications Systems Division, but that had little effect, and there has been a further reorganisation and change of management in recent weeks.
