Being acquired by a Swiss/South African consortium does not happen to US companies every day, but the change of parentage does not seem to have caused much consternation to Timeplex Inc president Dewaine Osman. In a recent trip to Europe Osman spelt out his minimalist reponse to the change – We will behave as a separate, autonomous company… there will be on-going continuity… there will be no major restructuring. Even the joint marketing relationship with Unisys Corp, Timeplex’s erstwhile parent, will remain in place, at least until 1992, when the contract is up – and then Osman predicts that it will be renewed. Ascom Holding AG, the Swiss half of the relationship and controlling shareholder, is a broad communications and service automation group which has presumably bought Timeplex to bolster its local network division. Osman admits that on the product front anyway, there will have to be some changes, as the two companies rationalise product lines in the packet switching and X25 area. But otherwise he is adamant, we will not make business decisions based on issues in Ascom. However Osman does believe that there will be opportunities for partnering referring to Ascom’s significant customer base in Switzerland and Scandanivia. And Mercedes Information Technologies Pty Ltd, the Johannesburg-based 49% shareholder already owns the company which distributes and services Timeplex products in South Africa. Overall, Osman believes that the acquisition will give more of a comfortable feel to the European environments. Last year Timeplex restructured its worldwide operations, and around half of its turnover came from outside the US last year. As far as future directions are concerned, the company seems to be joining the internetworking bandwaggon. Although Timeplex is traditionally strong in local area networking, like many others Osman reports Enterprise Networking as the way forward and is keen to stress his hopes for Timeplex’s future involvement in the potentially lucrative area. Osman says US customers are beginning to look at Timeplex’s wide area, X25 and Time/LAN internetworking products, although he admits that the company’s offering in the internetworking area is not yet up to scratch, adding that it may buy in technology in the form of acquisitions and maybe mergers. Also, the joint marketing arrangement with Unisys is not exclusive, and Osman says he would expect the company to set up similar arrangements with others – although as yet he’s not saying which.
