Cybergraphic and SII at Pantech '97: Grinberg and Washington discuss stratgies and cooperation. (Cybergraphic managing director Bernie Grinberg, Systems Integrators Inc's CEO Frank Washington) (Company Business and Marketing)(Interview)

At the PANPA conference in Adelaide, we had an opportunity to talk with Bernie Grinberg, managing director of Cybergraphic, and Frank Washington, president and CEO of SII. This was a unique opportunity to see how these company leaders view their new alliance and how each will move forward. It also provided an opportunity for each of them to discuss options for the future and, perhaps, lay a groundwork for continued strategizing at home. This is probably more critical for SII, since it will be facing a very inquisitive and large U.S. customer base at Nexpo. It will be pressed for firm answers from customers trying to formulate their own strategies on how to approach the near- and long-term future, and the year-2000 issue in particular.

Global strategy

Pacific region strategy. In Australia and the rest of the Pacific area, the picture for the two companies is a bit clearer than it is in the U.S. or in Europe. SII has more than a dozen customers in the Pacific region, which will require continued support for Tandem-based systems. The support, along with minor upgrades to peripherals (or migration to Windows-based client screens), will generally come from SII, which has three representatives in the region to handle this task. The migration path for these customers will be the same as for the rest of the SII customer base, as outlined below. This was not …