Slough-based Expertech Ltd, which looked to be one of the more commercially-oriented expert system companies, has gone into receivership. The company was set up in December of 1984 by the founder of CAP, Alex d’Agapayeff, and Professor Bob Kowalski of Imperial College (CI No 87). The two came to market with an expert system shell called XiPlus, which was based on the PROPS diagnosis system developed by the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. The product was heralded as the VisiCalc of expert systems by Expertech and being an MS-DOS system, with rules entered in plain English, rapidly found favour with blue chip customers such as Rolls Royce, Ford and British Petroleum. Organisations such as the UK Atomic Energy Authority, Olivetti Systems & Networks and ICL marketed the product – ICL went so far as to take a 20% stake for UKP212,000 in April 1988. In May of last year the company bought Intelligent Systems International Ltd, an expert systems house originally set up with backing from chemicals giant ICI. Expertech wanted the object-oriented technology to be found in Intelligent Systems’ Egeria product. Expertech appeared to be flourishing but has effectively had a for sale notice for some time, says Ernst & Young receiver Jason Elles. Part of the problem appears to be that it stretched its resources too thinly – it has invested around UKP3m in research and development over the years, which is not a great deal, but each time it wanted money it has gone cap in hand to companies such as 3i, Hill Samuel and ICL. The acquisition of Egeria may have been a further handicap in that the product, while sound, required substantial investment before a return was likely to be made. In the meantime companies such as Intelligent Environments Ltd of Richmond, Surrey with its Crystal product have been competing head to head with Expertech at blue chip sites with a more competitively priced product. The end result being that Ernst & Young is now inviting offers for the assets and business of the UKP2m turnover company. Elles says that so far there has been a lot of interest in Expertech by information technology companies, but he is not yet ruling out the possibility of having to liquidate the company.
