From Richard Holway, Editor, Holway Report, Richard Holway Ltd,Farnham, Surrey.

I was very interested to read the review of BT Customer Systems in (CI No 2,171). You (or BT) quote from our research issued a year ago unfortunately without acknowledging the source. But I’m used to that! Can I correct and update the statements: * Out of total revenues of cUKP200m in both 1991 and 1992, BT Customer Systems earned UKP160m and UKP172m respectively in the UK market. * In 1991 that made them the largest UK owned supplier of computing services to the UK market not the largest UK system house. Logica is the largest UK owned system house by total revenues in 1992 with total revenues of UKP201m.

We are just about to publish our definitive rankings for 1992 as a small part of the analyses in the 1993 Holway Report to be publichsed in June 1993) I attach the relevant page from the latest as yet unpublished report: as you can see in 1992, BT Customer Systems was the fifth largest supplier of computing services to the UK market. The other entries make interesting reading! We understand that ICL intends to make a big splash about their now dominant position.

The suppliers of software and computing services to the UK market, ranked by 1992 revenue and including all suppliers with UK revenues exceeding UKP100m, is presented below. These 16 companies had combined UK revenues of UKP2,600m in 1992 – up around 19% on 1991. These Top 16 companies therefore represent around 43% of our estimate of UKP6,100m for the total UK market. (The top Ten represent around a third of the total market). This growth was nearly four times the 5% growth rate experienced by the average UK CSI company. The big really are getting bigger.

Software and Computing Services Top Suppliers to the UK Market in 1992.

Rank Company 1992 1991 Growth

1 ICL CSI Revenues UKP365m UKP250m 46% 2 EDS-Scicon UKP255m UKP232m 10% 3 Anderson Consulting UKP215m UKP172m 25% 4 IBM CSI Revenues UKP207m UKP170m 22% 5 BT Customer Systems UKP172m UKP160m 8% 6 Sema Group UKP172m UKP145m 19% 7 Hoskyns UKP163m UKP165m -1% 8 Cray Electronics/ Dowty IT UKP160m Not comparable 9 AT&T Istel Business Unit UKP150m UKP150m 0% 10 Logica UKP122m UKP121m 1% 11 McDonnell Douglas Information Systems UKP108m Not comparable 12= ACT Group UKP106m UKP91m 16% 12= Oracle UKP106m UKP91m 16% 14 DEC CSI Revenues UKP102m UKP79m 30% 15= Data Sciences UKP100m Not comparable 15= Microsoft UKP100m UKP67m 50%