British Telecommunication Plc’s largest Unix installation to date is a system called Workmanager that will automate despatch of British Telecom engineers and will run on HP 9000 T500 servers, with software from Oracle Corp. The deal is worth UKP14.5m to Hewlett-Packard Co and UKP2.5m to Oracle. Oracle is supplying both its relational database and Co-operative Development Environment software. The Workmanager application will run on six clusters of Hewlett-Packard servers and will support British Telecom engineers within separate regional areas. The Oracle software will co-ordinate job schedules for the British Telecom engineers. These engineers will access the system using handheld terminals, receive work orders through it and also report back through it. There will be 30,000 engineers connected to the system when it is complete. However the companies involved say that concurrent use will be kept well down. British Telecom says it has tested the system with up to 1,500 concurrent users – the absolute maximum. It expects average concurrent use to be well under figure once the system is in day-to-day use. So far, 2,800 engineers have been hooked up to the system since implementation began in mid-February. Completion is set for next March. Hewlett snatched the deal from Sequent Computer Systems Corp at the last minute, say sources.
