William Morris Buys 250 Next Workstations : Technology: The $2.5-million deal marks the first significant corporate purchase of Steven Jobs’ latest computer.

Steven Jobs, the personal computer pioneer struggling to hit it big a second time, has landed his first major corporate deal, selling 250 of his Next workstations to the William Morris talent agency in Beverly Hills and New York.

Although the $2.5-million deal isn’t large by the standards of corporate America, it does represent an achievement that has proven elusive for the computer industry’s most celebrated marketing whiz: acceptance of his latest computer.

Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, introduced the Next computer in October, 1988, amid great hoopla and claims that it would soon be a major player in the market for powerful desktop computers. However, Next, the small Silicon Valley company that Jobs founded in 1985, took longer than expected to release its first working models, and software publishers have been slow to introduce programs that work on the computer.

A year ago, Jobs signed a marketing deal with Businessland, the nation’s largest computer retail chain, that insiders predicted would result in the sale of $100 million of the machines by the end of this year. But so far, sources say, Next has sold a few stations to universities and corporations for evaluation but has not won large companywide installation contracts.

The William Morris deal changes that. According to sources at Next and the talent agency, William Morris has installed 78 of the $10,000 machines in its Beverly Hills and New York offices and will connect the remainder by year-end. The systems, which will be connected to a telecommunications network, are designed to allow the agents to instantaneously check on the availability of actors, directors and others in the entertainment business and improve the agency’s deal-making capabilities.

“The deal makers have never relied on this type of technology before,” said a company spokesman. “The agents had nothing before except telephones.”

A spokeswoman for Next said the talent agents will use specially designed software that will ultimately allow them to store and view videos of the entertainers they are tracking.