At the time of the sale, Mr. Foster had plans to pursue: "I am a person who looks to the future, and the day was done in hardware." Financial software was the next wave to catch. He went on a buying spree, adding three financial-software companies, Quotient, Kindle Group, and BIS Group, then a unit of Nynex Corp., to the ragbag collection of service businesses left in ACT after the sale of Apricot. Chasing a new trend, ACT's sales soared to 200 million pounds in the early 1990s -- making it one of the biggest players in its niche.