In early 1980, MCM made a decision to evolve its best selling MCM/900 system into a multi-user, distributed data processing network that shared peripherals and a common file system. The system called MCM Power was announced in mid-1980. It's single-user stripped-down version—the MicroPower—was offered the same year.
Marketing the MCM Power borrowed freely from the well-established marketing practices developed for the MCM/70 and its successors. While the MCM/70 was to bridge the gap between programmable calculators and large mainframe computers which were beyond the reach of most businesses, the Power and MicroPower systems were to:
bridge the gap between the small business systems and the large, complex computers which are beyond the reach of most businesses.
As its MCM predecessors—the MCM/70, /800, and /900—the Power and MicroPower offered an APL environment and virtual memory that significantly extended the amount of memory available to users.
With the introduction of the Power system, MCM offered an innovative approach to growing a computing environment according to the requirements of the user. An organization owning a single-user MicroPower could easily expand it into a sophisticated multi-user computing environment consisting of several Power stations sharing peripherals over a communications link called POWERLINK, as shown in the image below.
Shown in the exhibit: an MCM MicroPower.