products and services

Superminis for small businesses MA1 has launched a series of uperminis aimed at the med- urn size business of 200 or

nore staff. There are three nodels in the series, with one, wo and three processors; res- lectively, fitting in at various evels of the MA1 Basic Four lroduct range. The 8030, with

hree processors and 1536 <byte internal memory now leads the product line. Maxi-

mum memory for this machine IS 6 Mbyte, and maximum number of terminals is 96.

The three models are com- patible with the rest of the MA1 range, running under BOSS, the proprietary opera- ting system unusually written m Pascal. Currently only Busi- ness Basic is supported for running applications. COBOL is to be available in summer 1984, and there are plans for offering Pascal. Software op- tions include a modular Office .Management System, and a recently launched applications generator called Origin.

Basic prices range from $55000 for the 8010 (single processor) through $134 000 for the 8020 (double processor) to $210000 for the 8030 (triple processor). Terminals and disc storage will increase these prices. MAI puts the cost of an 8000 installation where there

are greater than 100 terminals at $4000 per terminal. This, it

says, is lower than an industry

average of $6-7000 per ter- minal. MA1 also claims that its new machine is faster than the DEC VAX 111730, and the VAX 111750, the Data General MV4000 and MV6000, the HP3000 and others in the same range.

MA1 markets worldwide through its own offices and distributors. It manufactures in the USA and Holland. (MAZ, 560 Lexington Avenue,

New York, NY 10022, USA.

MAZ United Kingdom Ltd, Black Arrow House, Chandos

Road, London NW10 6NF,

UK. Tel: 01-965 9731.) 0

Financial decision support

A financial management sys- tem for personal computers has been announced by Fox & Geller, a US company which has until now concentrated on dBase II enhancements. This is not another spreadsheet argues company chairman and

cofounder Dr Jacob Geller: ‘It is a new category of software

. a step beyond spread- sheet.’

The package, called Oz, allows a user to enter and report upon financial data of a company in five categories: budget, forecast (which is con- stantly revised), actuals, last year and next year. From this

data the manager can then perform:

l profit and loss forecasting l variance analysis l 3D financial graphics l business graphics l monthly financial reports

The variance analysis capa- bility lets the manager work back through a report to find out why actual figures vary from budget. Every time the user makes an entry in the financial data he or she can add a reason e.g. the monthly salary bill is increased because extra staff were taken on. This information can be retrieved later to help answer questions on budgets versus actual.

The 3D financial analysis means that a business can be viewed by line items, time and departments. For example, you can look at the revenue and expenses of a certain de- partment over a year, or at the costs of all departments for one month, or the cost of salaries throughout the organization over time.

The package works best on a colour monitor with graphics capability, as most of the figures can be turned into various kinds of graphs with a keystroke. It costs $495 in the USA and &350 in the UK. Languages available are Ger- man, French, Japanese, Dutch

and English. The software in- cludes a facility for swopping currencies.

At present the software runs under MS/DOS. Soon avail- able will be a CPiM-86 ver- sion, and a version for the Sirius, which Geller is keen to produce quickly.

The package will interface

to popular databases and spreadsheet programs. (Fox & Geller (UK) Ltd, I7 Wigmore Street, London WlH 9LA, UK.

Tel: 01-580 5816. Fox& Geller

Inc., 604 Market Street, Elm- wood Park, NY 07407, USA.)

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LAN through telephone cables A local area network aimed at

the nontechnical user has been launched by Micom-Borer in the UK. Instanet uses the twisted pair cables already connecting telephones to carry data around a building.

The LAN has X.25 links for packet access, concentrator links for remote terminal clus- ters and 1.544 Mbit/s links for wide area networking. The network is managed by Micom’s Micro 600 data FEY. Co~~icom-Borer Ltd,

IS Craddock Road, Reading, Berks RG2 QYT, UK. Tel: (0734) 866801.)

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~0126 no 1 januaryifebruary 1984 47