Nashua, New Hampshire-based Mac and Windows communications company White Pine Software Inc announced earlier this month that it had completed acquired About Software Corp, based in La Gaude, near Nice, to provide a wider product line and international presence for both companies. White Pine president and chief executive Howard Berke said the agreement enables the company to affirm its presence in Europe, grow its research and development and support groups in California and to reinforce its Macintosh and Windows terminal emulation product lines by integrating About’s 5PM technology. Said Berke, White Pine has been focused on graphics-based connections, while About has done alpha-numeric. Indicative of the equal stature of the two companies, White Pine appointed Killko Caballero, About’s president-technical director, to the post of vice-president of research and development. With 100 employees now, White Pine-About said it intended to grow its European and West Coast operations; it has already added three technical staffers in France. We believe we have our fingers in the three most important technology locales in the world – California, Route 128 and southern France – for recruiting, said Berke, because ours is a people business and this should enable us to attract and retain talent from around the world. He added that each location would include development staff. About was established in 1988 as a service company aiming to integrate Macintoshs into big corporate systems. Its founding staff chose an English name because they were from around the world. It introduced its cross-system communications development tool 5PM in 1991 and a Windows version followed in 1994. Its revenues, 80% of which were Mac and 20% of which were Windows sales, totalled $2.5m in 1994 and are estimated at $4m this year. Europe sales manager Pascal Jahu said About’s sales are 65% Europe and 25% US. White Pine’s revenues for 1994 were $6m, which should grow to $12m or $13m this year when combined with About’s sales. In answer to ‘Why the merger?’, Berke presented the reasons in summary form. White Pine’s strong points, he said, are American, Asian sales channel and OEM licensing; graphical terminal emulators (VT340, Tektronix); X server products (eXodus); and it is a leader in the Mac market. Meanwhile About’s strong points are European and Middle Eastern sales; text-based terminal emulation (5PM Term); cross-system development environment (5PM Pro); and a lead in the Mac market. The merger, said Berke, gives them the most important worldwide company in Mac communications. White Pine and About have added Internet connection products to their lines to further round out their communications range: CU-SeeMe, a TCP/IP-based video conference tool for the Internet, and 5PM Internet, an integrated software suite. White Pine master-licensed CU-SeeMe from Cornell University, from whom it had been distributed as a freeware to 500,000 users. Berke said hundreds of users have been downloading the alpha version of the enhanced CU-SeeMe from its Web site. We’ll have a beta version in 30 days, he said.
Be publicly traded
It’s quadrupling every month; we expect to see between 10,000 to 15,000 in November. There is enormous interest. The commercial software-only offering, which adds colour and shared white-board support, costs some $100 per user, Berke said. It does not support the H320 standard because that won’t do multiple configurations or work on 28.8Kbps modems, said Carl Koppel, international sales director, adding that it will add it to versions for other systems. The Macintosh version of About’s 5PM Internet, which was released this month in France, comprises a gopher, news reader, a bookmark for organising Internet information, FTP client and server, SMTP and POP3 electronic mail, X, Y, Zmodem and Kermit, Web browser integration, Telnet VT220, PC-ANSI, TN3270 and TCP/IP, Point-to-Point Protocol, SLIP, modem and serial connections. Following the About acquisition, Berke said that he had big plans ahead: we intend to grow
and be publicly traded, perhaps even in the second half of 1996, he said.
