systems

The alternative operating system

by KATHY LAWRENCE

C ompetition is so fierce between

the major vendors of micro operating systems that it is diffi-

cult to believe any other system stands a chance of selling. Yet Business Operating Software (BOS) has been quietly selling its operating system (also called BOS) and applications software to the business market since 1981. The software has been around longer than that, yet BOS sees no imminent end to the products’ life. BOS has clients such as the British Army, Metropolitan police and the Forrestry Commission. Every British

Embassy in the world has a system. Even the famous waxworks, Madame Tussauds, uses BOS software.

Despite some prestige accounts, BOS has still to achieve household fame, even in its home country, the UK. This is changing slowly, helped by recent events.

The company’s advertising cam- paign includes posters in the London Underground. These show nothing more than the BOS logo and an address with telephone number. If you want to know what BOS is, you have to contact the company.

Two recent product launches have

Abstract: A UK company continues to sell a given BOS much wider coverage in

micro operating system and applications in the computer press. Logica VTS de-

the face of competition from CPIM, DOS tided to run BOS on its business

and now Unix. computer the Kennet, launched last year. Now the two companies have

Keywords: data processing, microcomputers, developed a local area network, based operating systems. on Arcnet, which will link up to 64

Kennet computers running BOS. BOS has also developed its software

to suit the Apricot LAN, which is

based on Omninet. Both these deve- lopments are likely to give BOS more prominence in the micro market, in the UK at least.

I

CAP’s micro software development was

led by Alex d’Agapeyefj^

History

The story of the BOS operating sys- tem goes back to the mid 1970s when Alex d’hgapeyeff, then chairman of the CAP group, had the vision to suggest building an operating system for microcomputers. At the time micros were nothing more than single

~0127 no 6 julyiaugust 1985 0011-684X/85/060027-02$03.00 0 1985 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd. 27

Alistair Jacks sees BOS primarily a and distribution

board computers, but d’ilgapeyeff believed them to the the thing of the future. He began by establishing a

micro centre of knowledge at CAP. Then in 1976, CAP Microproducts Software was established specifically to build software products for micro- computers. The first system was de- signed by Esmond Hart, now a direc- tor at BOS, and served as a universal prototyping system. The system, Microade, actually ran on a PDP-11, but allowed the development of soft- ware for micros attached to the PDP- 11 via an RS232 link.

The next stage was to develop an operating system and language which could be demonstrated on micros such as the Intel 8080 and the Moto- rola 6800. These were developed dur- ing 1978, with the operating system becoming the first version of BOS, and MicroCOBOL being the chosen language.

By the end of 1979, BOS was a multiuser, portable operating system, complete with utilities such as a MicroCOBOL compiler, a linker and editor. Along side BOS, CAP was developing applications software for the business environment.

The crunch came in 1980, when the

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recession began to bite into the com- puter services market, and CAP was forced to take a hard look at its subsidiary businesses. The final result was a management buy out of Micro- products Software in 198 1. D’Agape-

yeff, having intended to leave and take the company with him, finally decided to go into consultancy in- stead. This left other employees to buy out and manage the new Business Operating Software.

Alistair Jacks is one of those ex- CAP employees. He is now managing director of BOS. Jacks believes that if BOS had been invented in the USA it could have been a major seller. As it is, its major market is the UK. Its success depends on its portability, and the list of micros on which it will run is constantly increasing. Also important are the companies which are willing to sell BOS within their product lines. Burroughs is the largest of these.

Another key feature of the BOS marketing strategy is that operating software and applications come from the same company. In fact, sales are application-led. The company con- centrates on selling business and office software, its biggest seller being

an order processing package. It also keeps mainly to selling packages,

although it does tailor software some- times. This means that the organiza- tion markets a limited number of products thoroughly, including train- ing for users and dealers.

Jacks is dismissive of the competi- tion. He calls Microsoft and Digital Research ‘one hit wonders’ although Digital Research has made a come- back with Concurrent DOS. As for Unix, Jacks argues that nobody really wants an operating system which was developed for universitites, not for

commercial markets. The fact that even IBM is now offering Unix means little, he says, because IBM simply wants to confuse the market until its own software is ready. Jacks believes that the introduction of Topview by IBM is an example of this. He pre- dicts that micro applications will all be written for Topview, and then IBM will change Topview so that it will only run on IBM machines.

Meanwhile, BOS will continue gently down its own path. On the

software side, version 5.1 of BOS will include concurrency and the local area network facilities. The next version, not due for a couple of years, may well include colour. Much hope is pinned on the local area network for increas- ing sales.

A change in market has prompted a change in selling strategy. Until now BOS has sold only through dealers and distributors, but has found that dealers are not equipped to handle major accounts. Therefore BOS is moving more toward direct selling.

The company may well expand into other areas. Jacks sees BOS as primarily a marketing and distribu- tion company, which could be equally at home with a completely different product. He mentions the computer stationery business as one possible area of expansion. He expects the BOS software to last at least into the next decade, and the company will continue selling it as long as there is demand. 0

data processing