NEWS LETTER January 06

The heralding in of the new year got off to a slow start, we suspect in the main due to the staff having done what seems to be mandatory, and that is over indulge in the festive spirit. Having said that, it does not take long to be forced back into the general spirit of work and the workload brought everyone down to earth pretty quickly.

Putting over indulgence to one side, all at Optimise wish all our customers a prosperous New Year.

At our last Open Day, we indicated that they would become a regular feature of Optimise in order for us to keep you, our customer base, informed of our progress and fulfil the promises made that day. As it has now been approximately 9 months, how time flies, since the last open day, we have arranged to put on the next using the same venue, “Bentley Hotel, Lincoln” on the 29th March 2006. Full details of the event will be circulated to all customers in the next few weeks.

At the last open day we indicated to you that the future of Prodigy was dependant on a complete re-write of the system. At a meeting of the Board of ‘Optimise’ last week, we have decided the route we should take, to achieve what will be a major mile stone in the life of Prodigy. Now we expect that you would like us to tell you in which direction we are moving, not a bit of it, you will have to wait until the Open Day to find out. One thing we will say is that product will be Platform and Database independent. So if you wish to know more then put the 29th March in your diary.

We at Optimise have a lot of knowledge of Fresh Produce, Trading, Contracting, Knitwear Industries etc, but we do not assume to know everything and will require the involvement of you, our Customer base. We will therefore be writing to you shortly in an attempt to persuade a number of our Customer base, perhaps one from each sector for whom we supply Software solutions, to join a Steering Committee so that between us, we get the product right the first time.

Since December much has happened at Optimise. We have formed a second company called Juno IT Services. This company will be headed by a young gentleman who used to work for us Weir Systems, Simon Piercy. His expertise since leaving Weir has been in Microsoft products and his employment gives us the additional ammunition and knowledge we require to enlarge our armoury. In addition, Matt Manning will join Simon to move the company forward. Matt brings with him enthusiasm combined with a vast knowledge of Microsoft Products, Security issues, and Web design etc. He commences work on the 1st March. Our attempts to tempt Steven Barker, another ex Weir employee back failed as the lad is now getting on in life and would much sooner do nothing!! ,so he is staying with his current employer, but we do not give up easily.

Juno IT Services was formed because of the demand from companies who have little or no IT experience ‘in house’. In this day and age, it is paramount that security of Systems and Data are protected, therefore it will be the responsibility of Juno to put this protection in place and police it.

We also made a decision to employ at least one more programmer to work in Paul Wilcox’s team to bring our total programming teams to three and a total of 9 programmers within ‘Optimise’. Also watch this employment space for a new secretary to take the administration away from myself. The person will be instantly familiar to most of you, but until such time as my offer is accepted you will have to wait until the next News Letter to find out who it may be. In fact, as we putting this Newsletter together we have received a telephone call from that person accepting our offer of employment .Miss Lynne Harrison known to many of you, will have joined the team by mid February.