Users skeptical of SII's future following reorganization

SACRAMENTO -- California's central valley in springtime: The perfect setting for the first open customer forum for users of System Integrators Inc. products since major reorganizational changes there were announced last January.

The hottest topic buzzing around in public and in private was everyone's ongoing concern about whether there is enough left of the grand old company to succeed in the complex and changing newspaper systems market of the future. The embattled company emerged from a year-long bankruptcy proceeding last fall that left some of its former creditor banks in the driver's seat while others, notably Citicorp, were left out in the cold.

SII Chief Executive Bill Aaronson allayed users' fears somewhat when he told them the company stood to make money this year. SII's business plan before the reorganization had forecast revenue of $36.8 million with a $3.8 million operating loss, he said, but the plan now predicts a "modest" operating profit from revenue of $42.6 million.

On hand to hear Aaronson were about 110 users from 11 countries, who came to digest SII's plans and look at the products and services of 14 other vendors.

The meeting marked the first time North American and European users have met together. David Pring of the Express Group, London, who is president of the European System Integrators User Group (Esiug), led the European delegation, whose 38 members amplified the unease already being voiced.

The Europeans were more unhappy than the North Americans, in part because they have enough problems dealing with a fully-staffed company half a globe away, let alone one that is down more than a dozen full-time positions from where its own CEO says its needs to be.

Those staff cuts were a source of worry for users. Not only were 42 jobs eliminated in order to "insure profit in 1995," SII officials admitted 16 other people had left the company (see The Cole Papers, February 1995), among them such key long-time employees as programmer Dale Filbert, type composition guru Frank Pazoureck and Doug Johnson, the chief of research and development.

Product development thus was a major source of concern for both the users and SII's management. (Users shot down one SII trial balloon: Would customers help finance some of SII's R&D projects? When SII was asked what profit participation contributors would enjoy in products whose development they assisted, no answer was forthcoming.)

The staff cuts have meant an apparent -- SII says "temporary" -- halt to the development of Scoop, an OPI (Open Pre-press Interface) product that facilitates pagination output from the SII system.

Scoop was a hot topic at a customer focus group in Chicago that SII had hosted a few days before users convened, as was concern about SII's viability, according to some users who had attended the focus group. As with the users here, the Chicago session's participants told SII that Scoop is, and should remain, a high-priority product.

Aaronson told both groups that development will continue on Scoop, but he admitted his team has been depleted (you can't go lower than zero) and must be rebuilt. Former SII composition specialist Pazoureck, for example, has been rehired as a consultant, in part to help revive Scoop development, according to SII.

Most of the remaining programmers are concentrating on development of the MTX workstation, a replacement for SII's venerable Coyote editing terminal.

MTX runs on standard Intel PCs under IBM's OS/2 operating system. (While SII could demonstrate MTX on a Macintosh just by putting a card with an Intel '486 Cpu on the Macintosh bus, the company said it is near a beta test for MTX on a Power PC.)

In a straw vote taken during a workshop, not quite half the users said they like the MTX product line, while the other half hate it, wishing for a Windows solution. This is a significant number of customers who seem to be rejecting SII's latest product line.

And that's not good, as SII has bet the company on MTX: Not only is it designed to succeed thousands of Coyotes in place worldwide, but its big brother, MTX Layout, is intended to replace SII's pagination application, Interactive Newspaper Layout (INL). SII announced that Inl 9.3, due shortly, will be the final INL release. All future development will be on MTX Layout.

Many users have ignored MTX and purchased SII's Roadrunner hardware add-on for PCs, which emulates a Coyote and allows access to SII/Tandem servers via Windows.

So far, only two sites are running SII's latest version 3.0 of MTX workstations. The biggest is the Press Association of London, represented by Brian Coles and Dr. Gordon Ross, who said he was quite satisfied with Mtx 3.0.

While it requires a great deal of training in order for users to master both OS/2 and MTX, the Press Association has apparently bitten the bullet and provided four days of training per user. Each person gets Windows (WIN-OS/2) training in four half-day sessions, and two days on MTX and OS/2.

Ross said the training has paid off -- the Press Association expects the conversion from all its 171 Coyotes to MTX workstations will go smoothly.

The Miami Herald, where I work, is using MTX and plans to add 60 Mtx workstations to our existing 26 in June. If that goes well and funding is approved, a total conversion to MTX of all 400 newsroom workstations will follow in 1996.

MTX Layout is running in test mode with MTX version 3.0 only at the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah. One person from the 56,000-circulation morning daily reported that the product is "not yet making them happy."

The Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City also is beta testing MTX Layout.

In breakout group discussions many sites asked SII to modify a standard PC software package such as Microsoft Word to work with its system under Windows. Some systems editors noted that only Windows NT (not Windows 95) could provide the horsepower needed to match MTX running under OS/2.

Some skeptical users joked privately that it will be a contest to see which product dies first: OS/2 or MTX. This is no joke to IBM or SII. Both companies made presentations at the meeting, insisting their support for their products is strong and unwavering.

After IBM gave a glowing report on how OS/2 Warp beats the pants off Windows, Tandem Computers Inc. followed with a report on its strategic directions that never mentioned OS/2 -- but did refer several times to Windows NT.

Tandem, SII's longtime supplier of central processing units, is now oriented to large groups of PCs connected to Tandem file servers via LAN connections. Old point-to-point links for Coyotes soon will be abandoned.

Tandem's D-30 operating system introduces the so-called Non-Stop Kernel, which has increased ability to serve hundreds or even thousands of PCs via LANs, and also places a new emphasis on database access via the SQL (Structured Query Language) protocol.

But it will not support Coyotes except through a LAN, or connection through controller cards supported only by the new Tandem CPUs. The LAN connection clearly is what Tandem is optimizing its new products to support.

Tandem's Non-Stop Kernel also will provide an environment emulating more than one system "personality." First, of course, is the original Tandem Guardian system. Next is a UNIX personality -- native operating system of many universities, and of the Internet -- and finally, Tandem is negotiating for a Windows NT server personality.

Tandem's best news? Its updated product line runs almost twice as fast as the previous machines.

The old K100, K1000 and K10000 are to be replaced by K200, K2000 and K20000. Because the 2-series CPUs have 45 to 55 percent better price/performance, it may now be possible for a large SII customer to run the system on four or five K2000 CPUs rather than two or three of the much more expensive K10000s.

Among the many workshops and round tables were two lectures by a chap named David Cole, former newspaperman gone bad, who amazed the attendees with the ease and speed with which he created his own server on the World-Wide Web (WWW) of the Internet.

Cole briefly explained the workings of HTML -- HyperText Markup Language, the native tongue of the WWW which carries formatting and hypertext links for web pages and indicates where the pictures go.

Cole said a key consideration in keeping a page on the Internet is to change it daily so repeat browsers perceive that things are of continuing interest there.

He also explained how to sell things, like back issues of The Cole Papers, or selected company and equipment analyses, simply by using a new service for collecting money for on-line orders called First Virtual Internet Payment system.

Most journalists having realized that their futures may be snared in the World-Wide Web, Cole's talks were standing-room-only.

In another break from tradition, outside suppliers, some of whom are direct competitors to SII, displayed products of interest to SII users.

Outsiders usually are invited only to the fall users meeting, when the group congregates away from SII's Sacramento headquarters.

On display were special ergonomic keyboards (ProMed Keyboards), Raid disk arrays (Baydel Ltd., of England), Macintosh add-ons (John Juliano Computer Services Co. of Decatur, Ga.; Managing Editor Software of Jenkintown, Pa.; Digital Technology International of Orem, Utah), classified ad pagination (DPS Typecraft of England), speech recognition systems (Associated Information Systems) and of course, software consulting and hardware maintenance services.

Two intriguing demonstrations were put on by: