News from Sustaining Members

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 28

HMW Computing Limited¶

HMW Computing Limited have relocated to Hamilton House on Victoria Embankment. Here we will be nearer our customers in the City and will be able to bring together the future development of our "4XTRA" Foreign Exchange Dealing and Position Keeping system. In addition to providing demonstration and conference facilities the Hamilton House location will enable us to carry out our maintenance contract commitments more efficiently as we will be much closer to our prestigious clients.

"4XTRA" our front end dealing system for the Banking community is achieving acclaim, and interest has been expressed by Banks, equipment manufacturers/suppliers as well as systems houses. We would be pleased to meet anyone working in the banking and finance fields to discuss how our systems can revolutionise the dealing function.

HMW are also pleased to announce that Phil Last has joined us. He brings his APL2 knowledge to us adding great strength to our growing team of consultants. Our consultancy team is always available for long and short term contract work, and we can supply consultants with experience in other languages in addition to APL, for example C, Oracle and JSP-COBOL. Call Stan Wilkinson for an initial discussion.

MicroAPL Ltd¶

MicroAPL has continued to record healthy levels of sales of our entry-level software - APL.68000 for the Atari ST, Apple Mac and Commodore Amiga. The distribution of these sales worldwide mirrors quite closely the sales of these machines themselves. Thus, for example, APL.68000 for the Commodore Amiga is selling strongly in the USA whereas the the Atari ST version is by far and away the most popular of the three in Germany. The UK sales of the Commodore and Atari versions are roughly equal, but we have noticed some increase in Apple Mac sales recently. We have been particularly encouraged by the take-up on our 'free' run-time version. Software developers are issued with a free run-time version of APL.68000 for use with packages they may develop in APL. The only condition is that APL.68000 receives an acknowledgement in the eventual product. At the moment I am aware of a couple of packages that are being launched in the USA and at least one in Germany with a lot more still in development. Perhaps people can use APL for packaged software!

Users of MicroAPL's own Mirage-based computers, the Spectrum and the Aurora, have been seeing a steady increase in the quantity of non-APL software they can run - they now have a choice of 7 programming languages (as well as APL of course!), wordprocessing, spreadsheet and database packages. The latest addition is a CAD package which is proving highly successful in the scientific area.

MicroAPL's consultancy operations continue to grow. We are currently recruiting extra staff to enable us to meet the demand, and an advertisement appears on page 32 of this issue.

Cocking and Drury Ltd¶

Steven Weller joins the company as a trainee in late July. Steven is studying for a degreee in Mathematics for Business at Middlesex Polytechnic, and will spend his industrial placement year in both support and consultancy areas. We are again on the lookout for permanent staff with APL skills, to be based in our London office.

There have been several new sales of APL*PLUS Mainframe and Compiler software. The advanced features, efficiency and compatibility with its PC, Unx and Dec Vax counterparts is encouraging its use as the strategic APL for the future.

Testing of the new APL*PLUS System II for the 80386 is going very well; the involvement of selected clients in the Beta-test program is proving particularly beneficial. To remind Vector readers, the new interpreter is a full second-generation system, which takes advantage of the 80386 architecture; 32-bit addressing permits workspace and array sizes that are limited only by installed memory. 15 Megabyte workspaces with nested arrays on your desk are now a reality.

APL*PLUS System II for the 80386 is compatible with both the APL*PLUS PC and APL*PLUS Mainframe systems, further extending the family of APL*PLUS interpreters. The new interpreter is viewed more as a mainframe APL system than a PC system, and will be fully supported under licence with Cocking and Drury acting as the sole UK source. If you require more details about this exciting new development before its launch in September, contact Aelred Tobin, our Micro Products Manager, in our London office.

Statgraphics is proving so popular that we have had to schedule overflow courses to meet the demand. We have also developed a new corporate deal for customers purchasing any of our PC software products.

In order to promote the spread of the APL language Cocking and Drury will include a copy of I-APL/PC, the free international APL interpreter, with each copy of APL*PLUS PC that we send out. In this way APL*PLUS PC programmers will be able to encourage other PC users to try out their favourite language.

I.P. Sharp Associates Ltd¶

In January 1988 Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems and I.P.Sharp Associates announced the signing of a multi-million dollar agreement for the provision of a Unix implementation of IPSA's decision support tool "Viewpoint". Under the terms of the agreement Philips will market the product, known as "Allround View", worldwide on its Unix-based P9000 computers.

Allround View provides users with a number of features, such as:

• Access to MVS-based databases such as DB2, Adabas, and IBM OS files.
• Access to Unix database systems and files.
• Electronic mail, graphics, ad hoc enquiry facility, and word processing.
• Integration of multiple P9000's in an Ethernet network.
• PC integration under Unix.
• DISOSS support through SNA
• National language version support.

I.P.Sharp Associates have adopted the 'shareware' concept for Sharp APL/PC; 50 copies of Sharp APL/PC diskettes may be made without paying a royalty or fear of copyright infringement. This does not mean that it is free. Registered copies of the software are available from I.P.Sharp and it is these copies that people are free to reproduce and distribute.

Dyadic Systems Ltd¶

Dyadic is pleased to announce the appointment of Objectif APL as the new exclusive Dyalog APL distributor for France. Objectif APL has previously specialised in APL training and consultancy, as well as in the development of APL applications. The company is run by Bernard Legrand, a well-known author of APL books, including 'APL et GDDM' reviewed in VECTOR 4.1. In a reciprocal arrangement, Dyadic will market Objectif APL's MERLIN, an APL spreadsheet package which is installed in over 50 VS APL sites in France. MERLIN has recently been converted to run under Dyalog APL, and will be demonstrated at APL-ication in September.

Dyadic is nearing completion of its exciting new 'windowing' software for Dyalog APL. This is designed to provide all of the functionality of the APL*PLUS/PC screen software, but will have some important new features such as horizontal and/or vertical scrolling fields. The new windowing features will be on display at APL-ication.

Dyadic has announced new implementations of Dyalog APL for the Hewlett-Packard HP9000-800 series, the Sun-4 and Sun 386i, and the Unisys 5000 models 85 and 95.

APL People Ltd¶

Since the last issue of VECTOR, APL People has undergone something of a re-organisation, as many of you will already know. Jill Moss has been appointed managing director to take full control of both the permanent recruitment side of the business and the company's contract work.

With this re-organisation comes a move into larger, more prestigious premises in Bath, and a complete overhaul of the company's image. Our new offices will give us much needed space to expand and take on more staff to cope with the ever-increasing workload, as the agency side of the business continues to flourish. This will be especially important now that we are branching out into C and Unix.

Another area that Jill plans to grow is in helping clients to fill senior managerial positions by means of an 'Executive Search'. At the time of writing, we are assisting a house-hold name in the fast-moving consumer goods industry to fill a vacancy crucial to the success of their IT strategy. Jill hopes to build up a reputation for the company of being able to find people with the right management skills, business background and technical knowledge for senior vacancies vital to the success of major organisations.

Tim Perry's extensive experience in the retail industry has been a major factor in winning several important contracts for the company, thus building on the success we have already had with one of the UK's biggest furniture manufacturers.