Artificial Intelligence Ltd, AI, formed seven years ago as a spin-off from Rank-Xerox Ltd and based in Watford, Hertfordshire, is divesting its Strand Software Technologies division, which will trade as a separate company – Strand Software Technologies Ltd – from September 1 this year, saying it is making the move so that it can focus on its primary goal of providing expert system software without distractions. Strand Software Technologies, responsible for the sales, marketing and technical support of Strand88, AI’s parallel programming language since its release in July 1989, will take an exclusive licence to the intellectual property rights from AI Ltd. Strand will be managed by David Catton and Dr Martin Gittins, two of the founding directors of AI Ltd, who are leaving to run the new company. Alongside them will be Dr Richard Barnes and William Pickles, both of whom been involved in the development of Strand88. David Catton notes that Strand will not necessarily remain a one-product company; there is every possibility that it will take on other products, although these almost certainly won’t be from AI since the two markets are so different. The new company will develop its Strand88 product further, and Catton emphasises that the next three to five years will be spent watching the market closely to see what is required in the way of parallel programming – being a small company means that it can react quite quickly to trends in the market. Catton suggests that offering systems with real time capabilities is a definite possibility. Strand88 now runs on Sequent Symmetry machines, MIPS machines, Encore Multimax, Transputer plug-in boards, Sun Microsystems workstations, the Intel iPSC Hypercube, with a version for networked Sun systems in the works. The new company will initially share premises with its former parent but is looking for its own base.
