In February 1981 BL Systems served its first foreign customer, Heineken, which used the company’s data center for remote testing while changing its own computer systems. BL Systems’ See Why package won the British Computer Society’s Software Innovation award in October.

The following month the company celebrated the installation of its 100th disc drive. After the first stage of the U.K.’s deregulation of telecommunications,

The number of BL Systems employees had risen to 1,000, and by the end of the year revenues stood at £27.4 million, with £1.9 million of this attributable to outside customers.