We can see the costs involved but we cannot foresee guaranteed profits – apart from those that will accrue to IBM, (CI No 1,706). Less than a year later, Legent Corp has decided that it will join the SystemView club, but on its own terms rather than as one of a pack subsidising IBM’s bottom line. Legent is a SystemView Development Partner as opposed to a member of the the SystemView International alliance. This means that Legent is not a marketing partner – unlike Goal Systems, soon to be part of Legent – and is not forking out the sort of money that the other five companies agreed to pass on to IBM. So who’s paying whom? Neither IBM nor Legent will reveal the exact terms and conditions, but admit that they are entirely different from those pertaining to Goal Systems, Bachman Information Systems, Candle Corp, Platinum Technology Inc and Information Retrieval Co. Further, Legent says IBM’s relationship with Goal Systems will have be renegotiated after the acquisition is complete, and while it intends to focus on development, Legent is canny enough to stress that doesn’t mean that it won’t have a different type of agreement with IBM in the future. On its own terms. Of course, the other SystemView partners may consider that’s what good enough for Legent Corp is good enough for them, and that existing contracts ought to be renegotiated in view of IBM’s flexibility and willingness to see SystemView revenues decline. Candle Corp here in the UK was not ready to comment immediately.
