Word processing information technology

A wide variety of information technology products and systems is now becoming available for the office. These range from electronic typewriters and word processors to electronic messaging systems. Terms such as paperless office and the office of the future are now being widely used.

Despite the publicity there is still a great deal of misunderstanding about the nature of the technology of office automation; as many as 71 per cent of the number of companies in a recent survey indicated that they have not received clear and accurate information on products and systems.

It is important to realize that office automation technology is not radically new. Like all other branches of information technology, the technology of office automation is the result of the convergence of computing, telecommunications and microelectronics. Office automation has emerged through a process of evolution rather than a technological breakthrough.

As in many other areas, there is a danger of ‘technological push’ in the application of office automation equipment; the technology is sometimes used simply because it exists. So why then is the introduction of information technology in the office seen by so many to be so important? There are two possible answers: first, the constant need to reduce costs and, secondly, the growing importance of information.

Businesses generally have a constant requirement to reduce costs particularly staff costs. Many managers are therefore hoping that office automation in the 1980s will have a similar effect on staffing levels and costs as the introduction of data processing did in the 1960s and early 1970s. It is, of course, difficult to predict the effects of the introduction of office automation.

Information is becoming more and more important in the economy. It has been estimated that over one-half of the work­force in Western countries is employed in the production, processing and distribution of information.

Many companies and organisations are experiencing a number of problems caused by ‘information overload’. These problems can vary from the slow delivery of information and difficulties in obtaining information, to the difficulties involved with certain individuals having too much information. Many managers hope, therefore, that the application of information technology in the office will solve these problems.

Office automation technology will, of course, be extremely useful, if correctly used, in solving a wide variety of information-handling problems. But it should also be realised that the present generation of office automation technology does not solve problems involved with the quality or selection of information. Further generations of equipment, in particular ‘expert systems’, are likely to have a much more dramatic effect on the methods of working in offices than present-day systems can ever achieve.

What then are the effects of the introduction of information technology into the office?

There are five main areas of benefit:

i. More efficient and effective use of management’s time;

ii. More efficient use of secretarial staff time;

iii. Increased access to information by management;

iv. Faster transmission of information;

v. More efficient storage and retrieval of information.

The most fruitful area for savings in management time lie in the areas of information storage and retrieval, mail handling and reading and retrieving information. It has been estimated that up to 25 per cent of a manager’s time is wasted, and that this figure can be reduced to 10 per cent by the use of information technology.

Word Processing:

There are a number of different technologies involved in office automation. It is generally recognized that the single most important item of information technology used in the office is the word processor. There is already rapidly growing demand for word-processing equipment, in fact it is expected that the demand for word processors will reach about a tenth of the number of typewriters in use in 1980.

The use of word-processing equipment is not likely to save secretarial costs significantly in all applications. Word processors can, however, produce significant benefits in certain cases, e.g. in repetitive work, such as ‘boiler-plating’ letters using a standard structure, and in the typing of drafts of long documents.

Word processors are however seen to be so important not only because of the immediate benefits in saving secretarial time. It is the expansion of word-processing systems that will provide facilities for electronic mail, information storage and retrieval and so on, which will lead to much greater benefits in staff effectiveness. Thus word processors form the cornerstone of office automation.

Generally, the hardware for office automation systems can be divided into four components:

i. Workstations;

ii. Servers;

iii. Communications;

iv. Filing and retrieval.

Examples of workstations are word processors, videotext terminals and data-processing terminals, in fact any device at which work is undertaken by a human operator. A server provides a service to the user of a system. The server is usually not at the same location as the user. Examples of servers are printers, mainframe computers, or phototypesetters.

Communications facilities in an office automation system can include Local Area Networks (LANs) or Private Automatic Branch Exchanges (PABXs). LANs and PABXs would be used for communication within the office. External communications networks could include: Wide Area Networks (WANs) and PTT services such as the Packet Switched Service (PSS) or satellites, microwave links or fibre-optic links.

Filing and retrieval in an office automation system would be provided either by a file server or locally at the workstation. It is often not appreciated that software forms a very important part of the introduction of information technology into the office. Software is needed for interfaces between various networks, e.g. interfaces to teletex, telex and local area networks.

Thus software enables a number of word processors to be linked together and to communicate via public networks. Software can also provide text and document interchange in the form of electronic messaging systems or electronic mail. Apart from the items of hardware and software described above, there are also such important products and systems as facsimile, videotext and microcomputers which all have an important contribution to make to the electronic office.

There are many dangers involved in the implementation of office automation technology. It is very easy to make incorrect investment decisions and to misjudge the advantages and effects of implementing technology. Indeed it has been estimated, for example, that one in four computer installations fails to carry out the function which it was purchased.

It is therefore absolutely necessary to have a strategy for the implementation of office automation equipment. The potential user must have a clear understanding of the key flows of information within the organisation and of the information- handling problems that they are experiencing. The user must then assess the likely effects that the introduction of office, automation technology will have in relation to their business goals.

A strategy will:

i. Ensure that the technology meets the information needs of the organisation;

ii. Ensure that the various items of technology are compatible and are able to evolve into a system;

iii. Prevent the wrong system from being installed p at the wrong place at the wrong time.

A simple three-phase strategy will help to minimise Problems.

The three phases are:

1. identifies user’s information requirements;

2. Match the systems definition to the marketplace;

3. Implement, starting with pilot systems.

Finally, it is useful to list some key concepts that should be borne in mind when considering the purchase of office automation equipment.

Word Processing in the Office:

Word processing is the first step that most offices make into information technology, and it remains the major element of office automation outside the accounting computer environment itself. It is, for the vast majority of organisations, the point at which the gradual progression toward the electronic office begins or began.

Apart from the accounting functions that began computerising in the days of air-conditioned-room number- crunchers, word processing has been for years the only use made of computer technology in the office at large. What is more, the creation of texts—latterly information in databases is the largest single operation in any office. Typing’ and associated work eats up, on average,’ 35 per cent of overall office costs, so it is not surprising that it became a candidate for automation.

Word processing grew up from the typing side of things as data processing was growing up from the accounting side. Now, with less costly and more capable small computer technology, they have met, realized they have been using the same types of equipment all this time and are merging their functions. There are basically two concepts which relate to word processing text editing and repeat typing.

Most users of word processors employ both categories of work and most of those start with the text-editing function. Typing a long letter ‘or report first time around means that the author will probably want to make some changes before sending it out. Pre-word processing, that meant typing the whole thing again, probably introducing new typing errors and requiring the whole work to be checked through a second time.

Records processing is a natural extension of text editing and takes the information being held for report writing, etc., into more useful roles. It soon realized that it was compiling, almost by accident, a database of all enquiries received, quotations sent out as a result and, because the information was kept for producing works instructions if they won the order, a record of their success rate. It took little extra thought to create a complete sales activity record system using that database of information. Their word-processing system allows them to key in up to 24 different parameters on which to sort so they can pull out the success or failure rate according to product, at varying times of year, in geographical locations around the world, by salesperson and by value, customer, etc.

This is taking word processing close to data processing except that the ‘data’ in question originates from text material not figures! Accounts people, coming along nicely as avid word-processing users, still tend to keep their figure work separate though the technology exists to combine the function. The automatic link between accounting system and word- processor, though feasible, is exploited by very few users as yet. It pays, however, in choosing a word processor to ensure that it has the necessary communications ports or local area network to achieve this. One will almost certainly be looking at direct communications possibilities within the lifetime of word- processor equipment bought now.

Repeat typing, the other main category of WP work, is simply the production of the same letter over and over again from a once-typed original. In its simplest form, the letter is composed specifically for the job and is sent to multiple recipients, whose names and addresses are keyed in separately each time by the word-processor operator. Another refinement is to keep the names and addresses themselves on word- processing disks.

That way the general letter to be sent to a known list of people can be generated either from store or be composed afresh but be mailed to people whose names and addresses can be matched in at the start of each letter automatically by the word processor and later be typed on the envelopes if needed. In a good multi-tasking system, it can proceed as an automatic printout while the operator gets on with something else.

This is a combination, then, of text editing and repeat typing. It is avidly used, for example, by sales people wanting to get their quotations and sales reports out with a minimum of effort but a maximum of refinement for the customer a bespoke report, answering the customer’s questions exactly, but compiled largely in kit form.

Solicitors, accountants and other professionals so keen users of this technique nowadays, every client must be made to feel he is the only client or at least the most important for the time being the basic principle of salesmanship after all. It just would not do to send someone a form of will printed on standard sheets of paper with spaces filled by badly aligned type.

When word processors stood on their, own and could churn out typing work only from their own printers, they were machines for typists to quadruple or, better their output. Now we are faced with the chance to integrate those units into cohesive systems that can distribute word-processing power to everywhere in the office and link it with other computer-based systems to form information networks. That is not as imposing as it sounds, though the computer industry does not make things easier by its lack of communications standards.

The typing department now has word processors, in the memories of which age details of all products and services, technical passages, etc. These are designed for inclusion in quotations, standard letters, standard replies to enquiries on price, stock availability and many other things. When a customer enquires about any product the correspondence that follows needs to have information about his credit rating, the products in question, the stock position and so on. In the conventional way, the clerk obtains this information by phone or from his own duplicate copy of the records—perhaps on computer printout up-dated by hand.

Linking the word processors to have access to the accounts computers, however, allows that information to be called up automatically for inclusion in the letter of reply. Linking word processing to the stock record computer automatically gives the customer the most up-to-date position in the correspondence. Further integration comes by allowing the clerks, the originators of the material, to see on terminals of their own the stock, credit, etc., positions before deciding what letters ‘to tell the word-processor operators to produce for the customer.

External Communications:

In theory, a company using word processors, corresponding with another company using word processors, should be able to send information directly from machine to machine using the external communications protocol X.25. This is being done mainly by multi-site organisations which can determine the hardware at each location. For communication to other organisations, teletex will provide the most popular WP-to-WP links in future. Teletex is faster than telex and, more important, is capable of allowing word processors to communicate direct externally to recipients’ word processors. All they need is the teletex interface on their own hardware or on the PABX.

Efficient Word-processing Input:

Word processing is using word-processing machines. WP work starts with the originator or author and efficiency has to start at that point too. From being simply a quicker and often less costly way of getting recorded material into the ‘typing pool’, centralised dictation has become microprocessor controlled voice input to combined typing and word-processing operations. In addition to allowing authors to record from their desks, whenever the need for a letter or memo arises, the systems have taken on more and more of a management tool role.

Systems calculate typists’ turn round time and allocate work efficiently on that basis; they assemble information on work throughput and so on. Dictaphone have always been in the forefront of the technology used in what has now become known as voice processing. Whether the word-processing centre is used to produce hard copy or to update computer files and information systems, the instruction and text material that originates with the clerks and executives of the organisation has to be keyed in quickly, efficiently and accurately.

Executives and clerks use their desk telephones to dictate, of course, and for them the principle is little changed from earlier centralised dictation systems. Two things, they will notice recording quality is improved with even more ‘cleaning’ circuitry in the system and they may dictate from anywhere in the world, controlling the recorder to which they are connected as if the telephone were itself a dictation machine. Users have a choice of using auto-change tape cassette recorders or endless-loop recorders in the word-processing centre with both types on the same system if need be.

In fact, there are plus points for each method and they are in many ways complementary for example, auto-change tapes are better for providing heavy out-of-hours usage while endless loop gives immediate transcription, while dictation is still taking place for really urgent work. Using the endless-loop recorders in the word-processing centre, the supervisor can change WP operators from one author to another at will simply by making short keyboard entries on her control console.

The interchange is so flexible, in fact, that typists can be switched from job to job according to their abilities, regardless of which recorder the jobs are on at the time. The voice- processing system should log into the supervisor’s control computer the time at which each particular job was completed, and by, whom. The system already knew the time it was received and from which telephone extension, it came, how long it was, what type of work it was and so on. Full records of thousands of, individual jobs can be kept in this way.

The work record can be analysed, in good word/records processing practice, according to author, keyboard operator, department, data, time, status, client, and so on. The supervisor has instant access to information on the amount of work being done by each operator and by the unit as a whole, throughput rates, backlog and backlog trends, the status of current priority jobs and long-term performance information all shown in tabular or graphical form.

Functions of Word Processing:

The typing and word-processing function in offices is fast becoming acknowledged as the nucleus of the whole office operation. It is here that the end product of people’s work, be it in their heads, as a result of other databases, etc., is produced. It follows, therefore, that the use of high-output word processors, the flexible manipulation of text material in whatever way it is needed, combined with efficient dictation of input material and instructions to the operators and close management control of the entire operation all these aspects make up the true study of word processing as an electronic office function.

Compatibility:

Information technology will, of course, be installed gradually. It is important to realize that in the case of communication equipment there will be many cases of companies who will continue to use older technology for some time. Therefore, new systems should, wherever possible, be compatible with existing systems so that, in the case of teletex, a telex conversion facility would be available.

Adaptability:

Any new system should be capable of adapting to take account of future technology. When purchasing word processors, for example, care should be taken to ensure that these can be linked to local area networks and to each other.

Standards:

The area of international standards in the computing and, communications industries is extremely complex. Because of the need for compatibility and adaptability, standards are important. Those installing systems should therefore take existing and developing standards into account.

Electronic Office:

Before examining the networks, services and equipment that British Telecom provides to establish and service today’s electronic office, it is useful to review the origins and relations of current developments. Until the 1970s technical innovation occurred at a pace which enabled it to be gradually absorbed into existing office procedures. Then, different elements of electronic information technology began to merge.

Much equipment likely to be commonplace in the electronic office is based on product design and technology that have been known for most of the 20th Century, but the increasing use of computing techniques within telecommunications plant and networks, and the growing dependence on telecommunications networking principles within data-processing installations have created quite a new, convergent technology.

The pioneer designers of the first automated telephone exchanges had to deal with such problems as how to make optimum use of a number of switches in tandem, and how to, use the signaling impulses from the dial to route call to their destinations through a sequence of trunks and exchanges.

Instead of using the dial pulses direct to operate the switches, the common control unit’ accepted the dial pulses into a temporary store and translated them into a machine language. The stored signals were used, under the direction of a built-in program, to control the switch operation, alert the receiving station and inform the send the progress of the call.

Modern telecommunications and computing systems are also united by a common adherence to two basic principles of electronic information technology: first, digital information representation and, secondly, the automatic program control of information processing. By combining the ability of digital telecommunications to handle a mix of all forms of communications messages, with computer-based techniques for storing information in computerized libraries and processing information, a powerful new technological force has emerged.

The terms information technology and computer communications most closely describe it. It is widely recognized that the accelerating number and variety of telecommunications hardware and services is primarily due to the declining cost and increasing resources, reliability and robustness of the silicon chip microprocessor. The microchip, with its vast potential for both memory and processing circuitry, quickly became the focal point around which the technologies of tele-communications and computing converged.

The principles behind microprocessor control can hardly be termed new or mystical. Each processor operation, such as addition or multiplication, consists of many smaller steps based on a system of logic devised by the 19th Century mathematician George Boole. Like the binary number system and morse code, Boolean logic is based on ‘two-state’ representation; in this case ‘true’ and ‘false’ are the two possible values.

In computers, these values may be stored in one ‘bit’. Microprocessors consist of circuits made up by interconnecting switches’ in logical patterns defined according to the rules of Boolean logic. Semiconductors act as the ‘switches’ and the values of ‘true’ and ‘false’ equate to whether or not a tiny electrical current is switched ‘on’ or ‘off.

If many such switches are arranged in a series then a ‘condition’ is established; put together an array of such conditions and a ‘Process’ is framed. In this way, information communicated as electrical energy can be subjected to various processes; by doing this on a microscopically small scale, a microprocessor is born. It was noted earlier that the boom in electronic office technology began in the 1970s.

The first microprocessor came in 1971 when the US- based Intel Corporation produced the first complete computer processor with revolutionary memory on a tiny silicon chip containing more than 2,000 transistors. By the early 1980s this figure steadily rose. First chips storing 4,000 ‘bits’ then 16,000 became commonplace; 64,000 followed rapidly and chips with memories extending to 256,000 bits became feasible.

Semiconductor chips have now virtually replaced all other forms of machine memory. These rapid developments in microelectronics have played a decisive role in increasing the methods available for information transfer. These include facsimile, teletex, videotext, telex, communicating word processors, computer mailbox, voice mailbox, wire broadcast and even standard television techniques.

Office Automation:

Office automation or the electronic office has always been difficult to describe concisely. Some claim that just one of the above message facilities falls into this category—others that a merging of two or three into a single workstation is sufficient. British Telecom has taken the widest possible view to accommodate the most ambitious interpretations. What is needed is not just a clever method of connecting some dissimilar devices.

A properly conceived office automation system must fully integrate retrieval, processing and transfer of information into a single entity which can be economically and with ease by expert and amateur alike. British Telecom has developed a range of digital network services known collectively as X-Stream which are available individually or as a component in a complete communications package.

BT Merlin provides a variety of advanced business systems which can be employed on these network services. Together they can tailor the electronic office to meet the needs of individual companies this coordinated approach is sufficiently universal that it can meet the many conflicting criteria that office automation entails. The present national telephone network was designed to carry speech signals by analogue transmission. Sound waves created by the voice are converted to electrical waves which are reproduced at the receiver.

In BT’s growing digital network, information is sent in the coded form of binary digits. The binary system uses only two states: on or off, one or zero. Binary digits are known as bits and the speed of transmission is expressed as bits a second. Digital transmission and switching are at the heart of British Telecom’s programme for completely restructuring the national network. The modular family of computer controlled System X digital exchanges provides major improvements in operation and paves the way for the broad introduction of the new services which are needed to support the electronic office.

In tandem, digital transmission systems are increasingly providing efficient and high-capacity communications links on cable, radio and optical-fibre ‘Lightlines’. The fusion of system X and digital transmission marks an important step towards the full integration of all telecommunications services on a single network — the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)—as all forms of communications can be carried over the one path, whether voice, text, data, TV broadcasts, facsimile or videotext facilities such as Prestel. This is highly economical since it eliminates the need for separate access to the existing BT network. In the past only the largest organisations could financially justify having their own private networks.

By introducing new services like the X-Stream range for information transfer and terminal interconnection, and by reducing the costs of such modern communications equipment as digital PABXs, BT has now made it possible for smaller organisations to operate a corporate network. Local networks can be built to organize the distribution of data between electronic offices. They typically consist of a high-capacity ‘wideband’ system, capable of transmitting a great many bits a second.

Many devices and machines word processors, teleprinters, computer terminals, database storage can be plugged into the local network which is continually broadcasting information around the whole network circuitry. Facilities enable office devices to monitor or ‘listen’ to the information flowing in the network. When a ‘listener” finds information addressed to it, the data is retrieved from the network and stored or presented on the relevant terminal.

The configuration of such corporate networks varies considerably, depending on the information requirements of each customer. British Telecom operates a variety of public and private networks throughout the UK, and by using elements from all of these, establishes the individual support systems for each electronic office.

No two solutions are precisely the same, but there are common themes. The X-Stream services are an example of such a theme, establishing a new telecommunications infrastructure for today’s electronic office offering a sure way of integrating communications, computing and the many facets of information processing.

Packet Switch Stream:

Packet Switch Stream (PSS) is BT’s nationwide packet-switched data service. It offers a new way of transmitting computer information by parceling data into packets. Packet switching uses a coded address at the front of each parcel of digital data as the means of leading it to its destination. PSS provides a network specifically designed for communication between computers.

By sharing the service economically between customers, it is a low cost way of moving information between offices. It has found particular application for low-volume transaction and interactive uses, and is widely used, in financial networks, data transfer and point-of-sale terminals. The service is also an ideal vehicle for text communication, and links a number of electronic mail facilities.

PSS is a gateway to dozens of packet-switched networks in countries around the world. KiloStream provides high speed links between computers and various terminals for text, facsimile, teletex or voice transmission. KiloStream circuits are provided exclusively for a customer’s own use and offer a cost- effective, all-digital service linking head office, depots, factories and shops. It is available at rates of 48,000 and 64,000 bits/sec, providing an economical alternative to data transmission over analogue private circuits and modems.

KiloStream combines high data rates with ease of operation, working over digital private circuits to link micro and minicomputers, computer-controlled PABXs, word processors and local area networks, slow-scan TV, electronic mail and credit verification. This X-Stream service initially serves major business centres. Rapid expansion is planned and will be shaped by market demand. An integral part of the service is the Network Terminating. Unit (NTU) provided at each end of the circuit.

The NTU acts as an internationally agreed inter face allowing customers to connect their own equipment. The NTU also performs the essential function of returning control signals to the network to aid maintenance. The NTU adds two supervisory bits to each signal transmitted by the user.

These are used for monitoring and control; the NTU at the destination removes them automatically, providing a transparent data path for the user. The KiloStream network incorporates sophisticated monitoring, diagnostic and alarm features, ensuring high reliability and fast response to faults. Maintenance is controlled from the X-Stream service centres, manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Customers report faults direct to specialist staff at these centres, and it is from these centres that BT provides a package of facilities to give customers assured maintenance support.

NTUs are compact units, incorporating the latest advances in microelectronics and providing standard interfaces for connection of office terminals. Designed for desktop mounting, multiple, NTUs may be stacked in compact racks in larger installations.

Mega Stream:

Mega Stream is ideal for large corporate networks, handling large volumes of voice, data and pictures for videoconferencing. It is the highest capacity private service, specially engineered to transfer information at speeds between 2 and 140 million bits/ sec. Mega Stream can be used for very high-speed data or to provide links between digital PABXs. A 2-Mbit/sec link can carry up to 30 voice channels. In the electronic office, PABXs, mainframe computers, word processors and remote terminals need to communicate with each other between a numbers of business locations.

Mega Stream provides the ideal point-to-point private circuitry. It is also the network solution to such electronic office needs as transferring data to terminal equipment at a distant location along a high-speed digital path. It interconnects a fast, multiplexed circuit to a number of analogue or digital PABXs, telephones or data terminals.

Multiplexing involves the use of a common channel to make two or more channels, either by splitting the common channel frequency band into narrower bands, each of which is used to create a distinct channel known as frequency division multiplexing or by allotting the common channel to multiple users in turn, to constitute different intermittent channels time division multiplexing.

Mega Stream uses the latter technique. The service is available between all major business and commercial centres nationally. It is provided by specially installed cable between customers’ premises and the nearest exchange equipped for digital transmission. British Telecom offers a wide range of multiplexers, to channel the circuit into a number of lower- speed data or speech paths.

Mega Stream circuits can also be connected, using a wall-mounted interface, to terminal equipment not supplied by British Telecom. This contains line- powered regenerators, system alarms and an electrical safely device. Like Kilo Stream, Mega Stream is provided with a full alarm system for monitoring equipment and line performance and fast fault location.

Sat Stream:

The fourth X-Stream service is Sat Stream—offering an international small-dish satellite network. The service, opening in 1984, will provide high-capacity private links for multi­national organisations. It will initially cover Western Europe, extending to North America and other parts of the world later in the decade. Sat Stream will also offer point-to-multipoint and temporary circuits within the UK.

Digital links can be provided at speeds up to 64 kbitg/sec. Equipment can be located at customers’ premises, perhaps on the roof or in the car park for sole use, or it may be shared, between users. The service is well suited to providing the urgent communications links required by remote locations, such as oil production platforms. The dish and its transmission equipment are so compact that they can be housed together on the back of a 35-foot lorry, and easily moved to different locations.

These services together form a telecommunications environment enabling customers to install and operate new kinds of electronic office business systems-systems that can handle data processing, communications and complex commercial management in one open, yet integrated, electronic package.

Merlin:

Merlin is British Telecom’s specialist marketing organisation for advanced business terminal equipment. Many offices already depend upon microprocessor-based systems like the Monarch and Herald PABXs, and advanced machines like the Puma and Cheetah telex terminals.

Merlin’s approach to the electronic office acknowledges the important convergence between telecommunications and computing. A new range of intelligent business terminals – the Ml 100, ‘ M2226 and M3300 – is designed to achieve maximum integration of office functions, while remaining sufficiently ‘open’ in both hardware and software to offer maximum interface with other office equipment. All three models are simple to operate and designed to evolve and change to meet the new needs of a growing business.

The Ml 100 desktop visual display unit gives access to computer bureau services, remote databases, videotext networks like Prestel, Packet Switch Stream and electronic mail facilities like Telecom Gold. The Ml 100’s intelligent modem will store access numbers preprogrammed by the user, making them available at the touch of a single key. It can perform the functions of a remote computer terminal, using all the storage and processing power of the chosen database.

Outgoing messages are typed at the keyboard and simply des-patched over a computer-based electronic mail service. Incoming messages are summoned from the unit’s ‘mailbox’ and the contents of a user’s ‘in-tray’ are displayed on the screen when needed. The Ml 100 can also be used for data transmission.

The M2226 small business computer offers similar press- button access to public and private databases. It can interface with all the services available on the Ml 100, with the, additional benefit of working to the national and international telex services, various Datel-type transfer facilities on the PSTN or private circuits, and full interconnection to teletex. It provides 5 Mbytes of Winchester disk drive storage, as well as 800 kbytes on floppy disk.

Merlin’s M3300 has 256 Kbytes of storage on’ two floppy disk drives. As well as the usual word-processing functions, the M3300 will handle all kinds of office forms, columns of figures, diagrams, flowcharts, and ‘newspaper’ layouts. This makes it ideal for composing, editing, distributing and updating customer and company bulletins, files and project documents.

This Merlin hardware is complemented with a variety of software packages. WordStar is the most widely accepted microcomputer word-processing program, and is regarded as something of a standard. It organises typed text into a preferred format, moving automatically from ‘page’ to ‘page’. WordStar makes deletions, additions and, changes of format at a single command. M2226 comes complete with WordStar and also features Merlin Master Interface software, which guides the operator to each computing application by simple options displayed on the screen.

The Business Desk program is a complete business administration package, enabling the user to computerise bookkeeping, invoicing and stock control. It can generate management accounts in the form best suited to individual users, and is sufficiently advanced for the professional accountant, but also well suited to the small business manager with no special training.

Data Star will do whatever might otherwise be done with a number of card index systems. It files address lists, inventories, invoice and order records, accounting and employee information.

Mail Merge and Spell Star are companion packages to WordStar. Mail Merge is a file-merging program which draws information from other files and builds it into the documents prepared by WordStar, while Spell Star ‘proof reads’ documents and instructs WordStar to correct spelling when necessary. With a vocabulary of 20,000 words, Spell Star is a dictionary on a disk.

Merlin’s range of software packages includes Calc Star, an electronic ‘spread sheet’, which lays out figures on the screen in columns and rows, according to a predetermined formula. The user can design formulae which will present the information in the manner best for particular problems. It builds and automatically maintains a data model and carries out any necessary calculation.

Finally, Sales Desk is an electronic record keeping system, specifically designed to meet the needs of a sales department. In one package it provides a customer card index, a reporting system and a cost-effective direct mail facility. The WordStar software together with this first-generation Merlin hardware combine to make a bridge between the technologies of computing and telecommunications. They are a natural expression of the unity and integration with which British Telecom approaches the electronic office.

Teletex:

The publicity bandwagon for Teletex is Underway. Those who have not yet heard the word will probably very soon do so. Opinions vary over what Teletex is. On the one hand, it is referred to as ‘super telex’—a method, similar to telex, of allowing business organisations to communicate with each other in written form.

On the other hand’, it is considered as a revolutionary method of allowing word processors from different manufacturers to communicate with each other. The reality is that there is some truth in both these statements and that neither view encapsulates the service to the exclusion of the other. However, the service probably doesn’t go far enough to satisfy fully either group of protagonists in this difference of opinion.

Nevertheless in practical terms, the Teletex service can bring decided benefits to businesses who choose to use it, and these benefits occur where it counts-in reducing costs and improving corporate image.

Objectives:

The fundamental objective of the CCITT series of Teletex recommendation was to provide an international standard method of communication between the various types of text- preparation equipment commonly found in offices typewriters, text-editing visual display units, word processors, business computers, and latterly microcomputers and office automation systems.

The outcome of these national and international studies was a series of recommendations for a, method of international delivery:

i. Amongst various types of office text-preparation equipment,

ii. Of textual documents,

iii. Of a quality similar to that provided by conventional office typewriter.

The transmission of these documents was to be:

i. Rapid (by electronic means)

ii. Secure against corruption and

iii. Automatic (the text-preparation equipment should be able to continue to be used in local mode, even during transmission and reception of other documents).

Furthermore, the standards defined were to be

i. Able to be extended in future with changing requirements and’

ii. Able to accommodate differing national requirements, e.g. different alphabets or transmission networks.

To achieve the above, CCITT proposed a basic teletex service, the more salient elements of which were to be:

i. An international character set containing upper and lower­case Roman characters, accents, some non-Roman characters currency symbols, punctuation, numerals and other more specialized characters.

ii. A definition of a printable page area with defined margin areas and specific print sizes and line spacing’s.

iii. A definition of the minimum features and facilities which were to be implemented in terminal equipment for use in the Teletex service.

iv. A requirement that national PTTs providing a Teletex service should also provide a connection between Teletex and the existing telex network thus immediately providing Teletex users with approximately one million organisations internationally with whom they might wish to communicate.

Following these ‘internationally ratified’ recommendations, the national PTTs throughout the world were then able to plan for the introduction of their own national Teletex services. In the UK, for instance, British Telecom has decided to implement Teletex on the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and on the Packet-Switched Service (PSS). Other PTTs have chosen different networks. In the UK, Teletex over the PSTN is particularly attractive to a large class of business organisations because, the PSTN is already widespread and is relatively less expensive in terms of connection costs than other networks.

Benefits of Teletex:

With the increasing amount of business correspondence and other textual information being generated by electronic means, and cheap and accurate transmission of the information, the provision of an internationally agreed service with the objectives described above is, indeed, timely.

The benefits which will accrue to users of the Teletex service will be both quantitative’ and qualitative, and it is worth examining both types in more detail. The most readily measurable benefits of the teletex service are transmission costs, although other additional savings are possible. Teletex can be cheaper than mail, telex or facsimile transmission of textual information. The number of A4 pages of text that can be sent for a given number of charge units over the PSTN in the UK to one destination

The actual amount of money which Teletex can save for any particular organisation will depend ‘the circumstances of that organisation:

i. How much existing mail, fax or telex communication can be transferred to Teletex?

ii. How much text needs to be transmitted?

iii. To how many destinations?

iv. With what urgency

v. Can different transmissions to the same destination be combined?

An analysis of these and other factors should be performed by any potential purchaser of Teletex equipment. However, it can be said that in most cases, Teletex is cheaper and faster than other comparable methods of communication. The international Teletex standards also state that where Teletex terminals provide both text-preparation and communication features, the two processes should operate independently. This means that the Teletex devices themselves can lead to quantifiable benefits for their users, in addition to the, transmission cost savings described above.

The text-preparation facilities of the terminals will provide the increasingly familiar benefits of word processors, e.g. ease of correction, alteration of text, production of standard letters and distribution of documents to multiple addresses that can be measured in terms of savings in clerical or typing effort, or increases in output and productivity. Once a prepared Teletex document has been committed to the transmission facilities of the device, then dispatch to the destination is automatic, thus reducing the loading on support services such as internal mail delivery, post room or telex and facsimile operators.

Qualitative Benefits:

In addition to benefits that can be measured, the Teletex service provides a second set of benefits to its users. These benefits aren’t so easily assessed in terms of cost savings or improvements in efficiency as the former category, but they will be important for some users. The following benefits occur in a number of areas, but tend to be drawn together by the theme of improving the service by the user organisation.

Better quality of presentation of transmitted documents compared to its nearest predecessor” telex, the teletex service provides a much higher quality, of presentation of transmitted documents. Use of typewriter —quality printers, with a character set comprising upper and lower-case letters, foreign characters, punctuation, specialist symbols, variable line spacing and A4 paper results in a better, more familiar, more professional standard of document arriving at its destination.

The transmission speed of Teletex compared to the postal services will obviously be attractive to these types of businesses. Enabling clients or other organisations to reduce their communication costs the provision of a Teletex receiving station may not directly benefit the owner organisation, but may allow clients or other business partners to reduce their communication costs where traffic is predominantly one way into the terminal. This, in turn, reflects back into the ‘image’ of the organisation.

Types of Teletex Device:

The Teletex service is intended to allow interchange of text information amongst a wide variety of types of text-preparation equipment from different manufacturers. Accordingly a variety of different types of Teletex equipment is being made available by different manufacturers to exploit the service. The available devices will provide a broad range of sophistication and facilities, and consequently will cover a range of prices.

Different Teletex users will require different features and different degrees of sophistication from their Teletex equipment and thus will vary in their opinion of the usefulness of the different types in their particular circumstances. The types are distinguished according to whether they are single or clustered systems, and whether they are new devices or ‘adaptors’ for existing equipment.

New Single-station Devices:

These will cover a range of devices from electronic typewriters, through micro and personal computers to sophisticated word processors. They will all have been designed to generate and display the complete Teletex character set and document formats. Each device will have a single keyboard and print device plus the mandatory minimum’ document store which must be able to hold incoming and outgoing documents for the mandatory minimum time. Some devices will also possess optional VDUs and optional memory devices such as floppy or Winchester disks, which will improve their text and document-handling capabilities.

Each single-station device will require its own connection to the Teletex service and will thus be able to function as a totally self-contained Teletex station either as the only Teletex point within a small organisation, or as one of a number of Teletex points within a larger organisation.

New clustered devices:

In the same way as there have been available conventional message switches, small business computers and office automation facilities which, share common resources amongst a number of terminals, new devices are being introduced which share a teletex connection between a numbers of terminals.

This results in the necessity for fewer teletex lines into an organisation and permits these lines to be used more efficiently. As an example, teletex documents generated by a number of different terminals in different departments, but addressed to the same organisation, could be batched together and transmitted in one call by a clustered device, whereas they would require a number of teletex calls by single-station devices. Hence in these circumstances, teletex call charges with clustered systems are likely to be lower than with single-station devices.

New clustered devices are designed to be able to accept full teletex documents from the service and to store them arid distribute them internally with the ability to display the full character set and document formats on their terminal screens.

Clustered devices are likely to find greatest use in medium to large organisations in which a number of departments wish to exploit the benefits of the teletex service, yet for which the provision of a relatively large number of teletex connection points would be uneconomic.

Single-station Adaptors:

There currently exists a large installed base of text-preparation equipment which, as far as their users are concerned, have considerable economic life left. The owners and users of this type of equipment are, quite rightly, reluctant to replace it with new teletex equipment with all attendant disruption to capital depreciation plans and the requirement for operator training on new devices. It is for type of organisation, which wishes to exploit the benefits of teletex, that devices such, as the Ferranti Teletex Adaptor been designed.

These devices are essentially self-contained ‘black boxes’ or printed circuit boards which’ can be installed retrospectively within the host device. They permit existing word processors and similar host devices to use the teletex service. The host device is responsible for generating the document to be transmitted.

At the touch of a few keys the operator then transfers the prepared document from the host to the adaptor, and from that point, transmission via teletex is automatically performed by the adaptor. The adaptor converts the documents from the character set of the host to the teletex character set, establishes contact with the destination, transmits the document, ensuring that all protocols and checks are obeyed, and keeps a log of the transaction as required by the service regulations.

Similarly for incoming teletex documents, the adaptor will automatically receive the document, obeying all protocols and checks, log the transaction and inform the operator that a document has been received. When convenient, the operator can, at the touch of a few keys, transfer the document from adaptor to host device where it can be displayed, stored or printed at will.

It is highly likely that such host devices cannot display or print the complete teletex character set, but where an incoming document contains characters which the host cannot represent accurately, then the adaptor should drive an optional teletex printer so that a hard copy of the document can be obtained.

This type of device is likely to appeal to small or medium-sized organisations for whom the full teletex character set is not vitally important, yet who want to achieve the reduced transmission costs, whilst retaining and increasing the usefulness of their existing investment in text-processing equipment,

Clustered Adaptor Devices:

These devices perform similar functions to single-station adaptor devices whilst allowing a number of host devices to share one or more teletex lines. Clustered adaptors exist either as devices in their own right or exist as devices such as the Ferranti Teletex Manager. This is a clustered teletex message which can also interface non-teletex devices to the service.

These products are likely to appeal to the larger organisation for which, once again, the full teletex character set is of less importance, but which wants to obtain the full transmission benefits of the service by connecting a number of text sources to a small number of lines.

Teletex is a modern international electronic text exchange service that provides cost savings in the transmission and reception of documents prepared on electronic typewriters, word processors, office automation systems and other modern text-preparation equipment. It provides faster delivery of better quality documents than comparable services such as the mail, telex and facsimile, thus enhancing the corporate image of the user’s organisation.

However, the service has arrived at a time when there are a large number of text-preparation devices already in use. Therefore prospective teletex users are faced with the choice of having either to replace their existing equipment with new devices designed for teletex, or to buy additional equipment for the service.

This choice depends on how important the features of the service are in any particular case and the cost of the relevant devices compared to the benefit which can be achieved. The two most important features of the service appear to be saving in transmission cost and the ability to represent a high-quality international character set on received documents.

All teletex devices should be able to provide transmission-cost savings. However, depending on how important the latter issue is, users have the choice between purchasing completely new devices which can fully represent teletex documents on printers and VDU screens, or purchasing adaptor devices which will allow their existing word processors to operate, with teletex.