As someone who worked for Avenue and then TFB during the takeover in 2001 I would like to point out one or two differences that I can see between what Iris appear to be trying to do and what TFB did. With regard to the development of a new system, when TFB closed their Sunbury office they lost all of programmers working in that office. This meant that they had a team of three programmers in the Fareham office, not really enough to maintain the existing products, at that time Solomon, Wisdom, SP3, P4W and the CB Systems products, as well as developing a new product. They have tried since then to incorporate the best features of these products into P4W, the chosen go forward product. One would assume that Iris have significantly more development resources that can be directed into their new product. With regard to the number of customers TFB has no where near the number it had at the time of the merger; there is no doubt that these dropped significantly in the first three years of the combined company. TFB, for a number of different reasons, lost a huge percentage of the CB Systems client base in Scotland. They also informed their customer base in England that they had three years to move from the existing system to P4W at the end of which time there would be no support for their old legacy systems. This meant that a large number of Avenue and some old TFB customers decide to evaluate the products offered by other suppliers. Iris have made it clear that they have no intention of stopping support on the systems that its clients currently use. Only time will tell whether or not they stick to this, but it is a different approach to that taken by TFB. With regard to redundancies TFB have lost a lot of staff over the last six years. When Simon Hill made his comment about redundancies I am sure that he meant what he said; I speak as someone who was later made redundant by TFB. The company closed a number of offices, four I believe, but expected people to relocate, most did not. The real round of redundancies came in March 2005 when approximately 30% of the staff were made redundant. This was nearly four years after the merger and is more likely to be due to the loss of customers rather than as direct result of the merger. If Iris can maintain their currently level of customers, I difficult task I grant you, there should be no reason to reduce staff levels. TFB have undoubtedly had some difficult times since it took over Avenue and CB Systems in 2001. However, it is now in a position where it has a greatly improved product that meets the requirements of three distinct geographical regions; Scotland, New Zealand as well England and Wales, something that it could not claim in 2001. It has also developed a product that is liked by those that use it, as can be seen from the fact it came first in ILCA Solicitors’ Software Users Award 2007. Perhaps Iris should take note as CS Group came ninth. Maybe Iris customers should hope that it does follow a similar pattern as TFB with regard to the quality of the product.