OCLC and Amlib

I’ve just heard that OCLC have now taken over AmLib, an Australian library system hitherto marketed in the UK by Applied Network Solutions. Interestingly it used to be marketed in the UK by DS (at which point my head has started spinning …..).

Firstly I wonder what now happens to ANS? And secondly, I wonder what OCLC’s policy is for library systems? In the UK they concentrate on Olib, the system they acquired from Fretwell-Downing, but I believe that they also market 2 other LMS in Europe called Sunrise and LBS?  I don’t know much about the 2 latter systems, but I think that in the UK Amlib seems to aim at the same market sector as Olib. Nor do I understand the reasons for maintaining at least 3 systems, but then again I’m not in business or in that odd semi-cooperative world that OCLC inhabits.  Whoever said that the LMS market was static?