In a bid to become a major European Object technology player and maintain 100% growth rates, French Object consultancy Valtech SA has merged with its opposite number in Germany, Interactive Objects AG. Valtech provides training and consultancy for object technology including the integration of those technologies into ‘real world’ systems. It specializes in OMT Object Model Technique and Rational Software Corp’s UML Unified Modeling Language methods, as well as CORBA II object integration. The company is also a distributor of Iona Technologies Ltd’s Orbix request broker, and Persistence Software Inc’s object relational application development environment. It says Interactive Objects is a perfect fit. The German company also provides Object training and consultancy, and is also an Orbix and Persistence distributor. The combined business will have offices in the UK in London and Manchester, Paris and Toulouse in France and Freiburg and Frankfurt in Germany. Chief executive Jean-Yves Hardy says the merger will give the company the resources it needs to develop the European market for object technologies. Valtech’s Hardy will be chief executive of the new company and Richard Hubert from Interactive Objects will become the group’s chief technical officer. If the company continues to meet its growth and profit targets, it says it may float on either London’s Alternative Investment Market or on EASDAQ, the emerging European alternative to New York’s Nasdaq.
