Metatools, which offer the capability to build CASE tools quickly, are very much in vogue at the moment and, pioneered by Bournemouth-based Systematica, they are also now being marketed by Ipsys Software Plc, the management buyout from Thorn EMI Software. It is fair to say that the two companies are not the friendliest of rivals. Systematica has had to build the market for a new concept, and has swept through the computer industry with its Virtual Software Factory signing deals with the likes of DEC, Information Builders, Cognos, Informix and most recently with IBM itself which has taken a 20% equity stake in the company (CI No 1,506). However, this year Ipsys, with a penchant for publicity, popped its head up with a similar product – Tool Builder Kit – which is, arguably, better than VSF for some environments. Ipsys is two years behind in the market and will have to fight Systematica tooth and nail if it is to survive. Nevertheless, some within the software industry – aside from Ipsys – feel that it is time that Systematica had some competition to counteract its bullishness in the market.

Burgeoning acorn

Andrew Wells, the chairman and managing director of Systematica heads a company with a turnover of just under UKP3m, about 85 employees, and an installed user base in 14 countries. He dislikes the epithet tiny being used to describe his company. This burgeoning acorn that is Systematica was set up in August 1985 by a group of senior software staff from various parts of Plessey. It took two years and an investment of UKP1.45m to write the Virtual Software Factory in Ada. Wells explains that the team didn’t really have enough money to write the product in anything else, but the use of Ada did enable it to bring a commercial quality product to market very quickly and Ada does have a very good reputation in the realm of maintenance. Besides which, Wells says that, at the end of the day, the language used to write VSF is irrelevant. It is probably politic, if tactless, at this stage to point out that the Ipsys Tool Builder Kit is written in C – more of which later. Anyway, all credit to Systematica for addressing the fact, five years ago, that most design capture and checking was done in the software developer’s head with tools such as paper, pen and word processor. Yet major procurement agencies were stressing the need for high quality development tools. The only way to come up with a profitable product to suit the different requirements of various vertical markets was to produce a generic solution for requirements analysis. This is, in effect, what Systematica has done, since the Virtual Software Factory checks the work of a software engineer for rules that can be separate from the rules against which it is being tested. –

By Katy Ring

Ordinary CASE tools have a certain methodology which is hard-coded, whereas VSF has a plug-in, plug-out personality profile. As Wells puts it: the client supplies the religion and we provide the church and hymn books. He claims that with VSF it is possible for a company to fire a 30-man development team, and replace it with a three-man development team who will add rules and who will produce a finished product in six to 12 months. Systematica targets two completely separate types of sale: it sells to sophisticated end-users such as British Telecom as well as to the software industry. The first market uses Virtual Software Factory to build its own internal software, while the industry uses it to get products into the workstation market quicker than would otherwise be possible. Wells says the product is now available on 80% of the installed base of workstations. VSF was first offered on Sun workstations because these were the first to have a fully-supported windowing system. Because of Systematica’s collaboration with DEC, which sells and supports HOOD-SF and SSADM-SF with DEC extensions built by DEC, VSF is also available under VMS and Ultrix. Indeed, Systematica’s first subsidiary was recently set up for the DEC side of the business. Called Systematica (Digital Products) its exi

stence may help to ensure that IBM’s equity stake in the company does not compromise the DEC business. Wells expresses surprise that anybody should think there is a problem in being a strategic partner for both DEC and IBM, saying that Systematica’s situation is analogous to that of the chip suppliers that supply the chips for others to make systems with. There are a couple of flaws in that logic, however, since Systematica is not likely to remain in the happy position of holding a monopoly on metatool technology and, also, systems manufacturers have not treated Motorola and Intel’s entry into the systems market with equanimity – and to continue with Wells’ analogy – Systematica already sells tools such as HOOD-SF and SSADM-SF. All of which brings us neatly on to Systematica’s main competitor Ipsys – Wells claims that he rarely runs into Ipsys in a bid situation, a statement strong-ly contested by Ipsys sales director John Lewis.

Sewing up the market

One assumes that nowadays any sane company would evaluate both products before buying one or the other. That being so, how does Tool Builders Kit differentiate itself from the well-established Virtual Software Factory. Basically, the Kit claims a performance advantage over the Factory for Unix systems, since Unix systems are not as good at coping with Ada compilers as they are at handling C compilers. Nevertheless, Systematica reckons that it is sewing up the market for metatools faster than Ipsys can say Tool Builder Kit. In short Wells says that there will be no market share left for Ipsys to pick up. Ipsys has a measured response to this argument which is we’ll win accounts out from under Systematica. John Lewis says he has already done this with the European Fighter Aircraft project for which, incidentally, the company was paid a substantial sum up front – and for the deal with Learmonth & Burchett Management Systems. Lewis believes that the sophisticated end-user market is just leaving its buy and try phase and is now at the point where it is prepared to commit to five year projects worth millions of pounds – here Lewis cites Barclays Bank Plc and British Telecom Plc as two examples. It seems that whatever the relative merits of the Systematica and the Ipsys approach, what is for sure is that an exciting new UK-based software technology is coming into its own with the capability to shake up the market for CASE tools in a very big way.