Icom Informatique, the French terminal emulation software house, has set up an office in the UK, and plans further expansion in Gernany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. The company, which has just launched version 2.0 of its Winsurf Mainframe Access product for corporate intranets, has its UK office in Milton Keynes, and plans to set up a channels network of two distributors and up to eight value added resellers. Version 2.0 adds support for Netscape Navigator to Winsurf, and although the company describes itself as Microsoft-oriented and in the Active-X camp, there’s a suggestion that a Java enabled product might emerge over the next few months. Meanwhile, Icom has added the IBM AS/400 to the Bull, DEC and IBM mainframe host systems supported by the product, a market sector where it will face competition from Wall Data Inc’s Rhumba. The company, which floated on the Paris stock exchange in July 1996, doesn’t appear to have decided whether or not to tackle the US market, where most of its competitors come from, as yet.
