UCSL - WHAT's THAT??
Unilever Computer Services Limited was formed in, or around, 1970 when Unilever thought to rationalise its computing strategy and create a centre of excellence for the group as a whole. At the formation of the company Blackfriars Data Centre, and Merseyside Data Centre, both already established to provide services to Unilever House and the Merseyside complex, were incorporated as the foundation on which to build. The head office was established in the highly salubrious? location of Stonebridge Park, on the North Circular road.
The goal was to provide services that all other Unilever companies would want to use. These service would also be sold to non Unilver Companies who would find the service, price, and technical excellence attractive - that was the aim. It was hoped that this would help to convince other Unilever group companies that this was something they could not miss.
With Unilever's private telephone network (UTN) being so readily available, technolgy progressively allowed remote sites to communicate to the mainframe computer centres, and so the business grew with the company establishing regional offices and data centres, and acquiring complimentary businesses to extend the services it might offer.
Our data centres were at Watford and Burgess Hill, which were later merged into a new facility at Woking, and in addition to the head office there were offices at St Johns Lane in London and on Merseyside, at Burgess Hill (in the premises of Van Den Bugh and Jurgens), and at Basingstoke (cohabiting with BOCM Silcock).
Our acquisitions were Datacom, the Singer company based in London, Anglian (the Rowntree/Mackintosh organisation set up in Norwich and York) and Microsystems. That latter was based in Berkhamsted with the works unit in Tring, and they produced the first handheld terminal to emerge in the UK. YES UCSL was (then) in the lead!
We must not forget COMPUTERCAR! This was a quite startling innovation and and really brilliant idea - selling cars via a computer system. Had the Internet been operative then it would have made £BILLIONS, but having to use the phone to call in was a bit slow by todays standards and it made a little less than that!
At some time in the mid 1980's the Unilever group strategy began to focus on "Core Businesses" and it began to divest itself of those deemed to be "Non Core".
UCSL and the UTN were two such, and Ross Perot of EDS set his beady eyes on these, and acquired them as a fully functional Computing and Communications business, giving him a much desired foothold in Europe..
And that was that - Yee Hah Cowboy!! - and UCSL rode off into the sun.