Fairfax, Virginia-based software development firm DataFocus Inc has announced that it is the latest partner in Compaq Computer Corp’s Unix to Windows NT interpretability and migration program. The agreement will see the Compaq sales force recommending the company’s NuTcracker Unix-to-NT porting tool (CI No 3,128) to potential customers considering a move to NT. DataFocus was established back in 1983 as a software and consulting organization but sold off its consulting division in July last year to concentrate on the software side of the business. Original demand for the NuTcracker came largely from independent software vendors but the company claims demand for the porting product, which is currently shipping in a 3.0 release (CI No 3,128), has taken off dramatically over the past year with the mainstream commercial market taking more of an interest. DataFocus remains as a privately held company and has revenues in the region of $7m, but says it expects this figure to double for 1997. The company says it has the edge over the competition like Softway Systems Inc (CI No 3,094) because it claims NuTcracker sits on top of the Win32 application programming interface rather than the Posix layer, and can therefore work with third party class libraries. DataFocus sells NuTcracker as a development kit with support bundled in; users then buy a runtime license when they deploy the product.
