As expected (CI No 2,709), Object Design Inc is reorganising in the wake of its financial losses last year and the sudden departure of much of its San Mateo, California-based SmallTalk development team to form their own company. The team, five or six in number, delivered the compa ny’s SmallTalk client in June (CI No 2,681), and more recently began working on a proprietary language project. Only two of the SmallTalk team remain and will transfer to the company’s Burlington, Massachusetts headquarters, while the West Coast sales and marketing team stay in San Mateo. It looks likely the company will also lose acting chief executive Phyllis Swverski, brought in when former chief executive Ken Marshall was made chairman. Her short-term contract is up in the next week or two, and it looks unlikely to be renewed. President and founding member Jerry Bay will take up day-to-day duties until a replacement is found. In the meantime the company has been undergoing a ‘business re-engineering’ project for the last five months. Greg Barzay, previously responsible for engineering operations will head a combined engineering and product management division, with sales, marketing and customer support going to former senior vice-president of sales, Bob Potter. The idea is to make Object Design more responsive to local customer needs. Lay-offs will be US-based and will account for 12% of the workforce, or 32 jobs, leaving 230 people employed worldwide. The job losses will be in sales, marketing and administration. The company insists its business is growing 50% to 60% in revenue per year and still intends to make an initial public offering next year. It also expects to add components to its ObjectStore Component Architecture, including a performance-tuning tool due out in 1996. The company said it gave Object World in San Francisco a miss last week, as it’s like bombing the rubble, and instead is concentrating its marketing efforts at the mainstream database market.
