Hoping to make significant inroads into the UK MS-DOS market, as well as revamping its well established Unix product line, business software specialist Tetra Business Systems Ltd, Maidenhead, Berkshire, has announced new versions of its Tetraplan accounting package – Tetra 2000-DOS for MS-DOS, and Tetra 2000-ix for Unix, Xenix and AIX. Both come with 16 application modules covering the main areas of accounting and can be directly linked to external databases, but offer different user interfaces. Improvements over the well-established Tetraplan system include drop down menus, windows, better security, browse facilities and a range of user-definable options. In particular, a new module – Data Manager – enables users to develop their own databases using a combination of system and additional data, which can be incorporated into reports. Although an adapted MS-DOS version of Tetraplan has been available for the past five years, Tetra 2000-DOS has been developed primarily with networked amd multi-user MS-DOS customers in mind. For a rationale of its MS-DOS drive, Tetra points to the UKP57.8m spent in the UK on accounting software last year – of wt!ch UKP33m were MS-DOS sales, UKP23m Unix and Xenix, where it claims to have a 22% share of the market, but it had only a 10% share in the MS-DOS stakes. Tetra 2000 is offered for MS-DOS and MS-DOS networks, Xenix 386 and Novell NetWare-based systems, Altos 1000 and 2000 machines, as well as IBM’s PS/2s and RTs running AIX from October. Other Unix and Xenix versions will follow in November, the Open Software Foundation’s OSF/1 Unix will be supported when released, and versions for additional machines are understood to be under development for a January 1990 release. And 10-year old Tetra is certainly looking to get aggressive on the marketing side: for the single user the company is putting the onus on resellers to set pricing – expected to average out at UKP600; multi-user MS-DOS and Xenix versions, for a minimum of four users, cost UKP730 per module. In addition it aims to have the top 100 UK dealers signed up to take the new software onto their books. These strategies come on the back of recent appointments to the company: Ian Brown comes in from Rank Xerox as UK marketing director, and Colin Stanley, former chief executive of Tetra’s arch competitor Pegasus Software, joins the ranks as non-executive director.