(The Tandem era may be drawing to a close anyway: It's viewed as "old iron," which is ironic for what has been such a forward-looking company. But then, in an open systems world, any iron is old iron.

(SII's new strategy probably will be to migrate to Tandem's NonStop Kernel, a version of UNIX, which will make it easier for the company to move all of its server technology to a relatively vanilla version of UNIX.)

Sometime in August, Aaronson said, the entire plan will be ratified and SII will be out of the soup.

Aaronson said SII carried on operations during the Chapter 11 period with no disruption to customers. Customer reaction to the reorganization started at panic and soon wound down to ambivalence, thanks to the company's public relations full-court press that shot across the country from site to site, nearly ahead of the rumor mongers.

Even given the trouble it has had, SII is among the healthiest of the "old-line" suppliers. It was willing to go public with the Chapter 11 filings at a time when competitors were clicking their tongues and shaking their heads -- even as their companies quietly hemorrhaged.

So, having survived a near-death experience (so far), System Integrators emerges as a born-again open-systems company devoted to UNIX, OS/2 and a PC on every desk.

In other SII news, the company looked up from its blood-spattered ledgers long enough to face three truths:

So SII formed a new division, MediaBridge, that will be separate (including sales force) from Those Ink People. The new structure will be headed by Steve Nilan, who "won't be looking through SII-colored glasses," Aaronson said.

Nilan will not join in the effort to move the traditional SII systems to UNIX and PC clients looking at an SQL database, even though one might think that should be part of his mission. Instead, Nilan -- formerly the chief marketeer and long the multimedia evangelist inside SII -- will concentrate on multimedia applications using different hardware platforms.

The first MediaBridge product is Voice Classifieds, a voice-driven, networked alternate classified system that shows a lot of potential to be all things to all buyers and sellers.

It allows, for example, a Realtor to put listings into the MediaBridge database and arrange to be paged when a new house comes on the market in a designated ZIP code.

It can "read" a text ad to a phone caller -- and translate English into Spanish and vice versa.

When cable TV gets interactive, that same Realtor could put a customer-driven database on the tube that features not just today's exterior snapshots, but a video walk-through of the house. These are all value-added services which look potentially profitable, even though SII will sell them on a revenue-sharing basis.

Is this first MediaBridge effort truly an SII product? Nope; it's a stand-alone system into which SII has written hooks, mostly for bursting classified ads between systems.

As Aaronson said, "it's as much marketing as research and development." But that also may be part of SII's vision of the future: Revenue sharing instead of outright ownership, and those pesky R&D expenses.

-- JB

Bit bucket ...

The Times are a'changing: In one of his first moves as executive editor of the New York Times, Joe Lelyveld named Rich Meislen -- formerly the paper's graphics editor -- as senior editor for information and technology. In this new role, Meislen will merge and oversee three entities: the newsroom technology office, the news research and information group, and the database editing group. To quote Lelyveld, "For years now, Rich has been the spiritual leader of our most technologically alert staffers. Or perhaps he can be more accurately described as an agitator who kept after us all to wake up to the implications of the latest changes." ...

Transitions: A 15-year veteran of the Associated Press with both journalism and software development experience, Sue Mosher is now offering services to news organizations that want to take advantage of the Microsoft Windows environment; she'll be based in Arlington, Va., and was recently named sysop of the newsroom computers section of the Jforum on CompuServe. ... Meg Smith, the stalwart of Newspaper Association of America trade show exhibit sales, has left the organization. She will become the membership director of a trade association for the fishing industry. ...

Vendor Vibes: At Advanced Technical Solutions Inc. of North Andover, Mass., Joe Francis has been named western regional sales manager. Francis had spent 10 years with Camex/DuPont selling systems on the West Coast. ... New chief operating officer for the Americas at Atex Publishing Systems Corp. of Bedford, Mass., is Ian Anderson, who will continue as the worldwide company's senior vice president for corporate planning. A 15-year veteran of the industry, Anderson has worked for Crosfield, Hell-Xenotron and Harris Systems Ltd. ... At ECRM of Tewksbury, Mass., the new vice president for product management is Edward Neylan, who has been with the company since 1988 in various product development and engineering positions. ... Also at ECRM, new sales reps include William Sikora Jr., who will handle the Great Lakes region, and Randal Waterhouse, who will handle the northwestern region. ... Dottie Butler has left Vertec of Greensboro, N.C., to become a consultant for Electronic Data Systems in Washington, D.C. ... Also new at EDS: Milt Goldwasser, formerly of the Los Angeles Times. ... At System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, a raft of changes: John Cook, longtime middle market systems executive, has become director of that sector; Lynn Pearson-Kreun, a six-year SII veteran, is now the manager of sales support, and Robert Lemieszek, formerly the systems editor of the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y., is now a technical analyst for the middle market sector. ... David Lightfoot has left DuPont Newspaper Systems, where he was vice president of sales, to become veep of sales & marketing at Xerox Graphic Systems of Stamford, Conn. (maker of the new Verde imaging product). ...

Confabs: The Poynter Institute for Media Studies will hold a three-day conference Sept. 25-28 called "Graphics, Design and New Technology." Speakers will include Nigel Holmes of Time, Mike Gordon of AccessAtlanta, Dierck Casselman formerly of the Detroit News and Bryan Monroe of the San Jose Mercury News. Application deadline is Aug. 31; get the point from Poynter at (813) 821-9494. ... The Atex Newspaper Users Group meets Aug. 13-15 in Long Island, N.Y.; I don't have any details but I'm sure if you call Lee Gagle at (419) 245-6219, he'll be happy to tell you more. ... The Scitex Graphic Arts Users Association will hold its annual meeting Aug. 27-30 in Orlando, Fla. Call Sgaua at (800) 858-0489. ... Seybold San Francisco will have a nice newspaper/magazine track this year, with sessions titled "Digital Delivery of Advertising for Publications: Solving problems in a new application," "Publishing systems for 100-plus users," "Digital archives -- reinventing the morgue," "Vendor roast: suppliers on the hot seat" and "The transition to a digital world." (Warning: two of these sessions will be moderated by a guy named Cole.) SSF is Sept. 13-16; call Seybold at (800) 488-2883 for details. ... For the first time the National Press Photographers Association will hold a Systems Editor Workshop in conjunction with the Electronic Photojournalism Workshop Sept. 24-25 in Chapel Hill, N.C. Attendance is limited to 20 and the tentative agenda for the workshop includes sessions called "Introduction to LAN systems," "Photo archiving," "Introduction to database structure," "The future of the newsroom" and "Connecting to the Internet." For additional information, call John Cranfill at (214) 977-8361 or Lon Cooper at (214) 977-8137 or John Cornell at (516) 698-5782. ...

Errors and Omissions: In the July issue, I just couldn't spell names -- it's David Neeff (a consultant and speaker at NEXPO) and Karl Gude (special graphics projects director at the AP). ... Also in July, I said that DuPont Newspaper Systems was abandoning Acomp as its composition engine in Whirlwind; before shutting down the business, DuPont executives demanded that I tell the truth: Acomp is one of two composition choices. ...#

From THE COLE PAPERS, August 1994, Copyright (c) 1994, All Rights Reserved.