Tivoli Systems Inc chairman Frank Moss has left the company he sold to IBM Corp for a whopping $743m in 1996 and formed a one- person holding company called Strategic Software Venture LLC to spawn new companies serving emerging networked markets such as XML, web EDI and ERP. His idea is to tap skill sets in the Austin, Texas and Boston, Massachusetts corridors (where SSV is based) creating what Moss calls a Baustin axis. The new company will focus attention on the East Coast and Moss has struck a deal with Austin-based client/server internet company Powershift Group – formed by ex-BSG Corp chairman Steve Papermaster – to help build companies in that area. Moss – who yesterday resigned from Tivoli to form SSV – says he’ll orchestrate VCs, entrepreneurs, third party companies and engineers in creating new companies. His first investment is Bow Street Software Inc, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which will break cover with XML-based networked data sharing technologies in the fall. Like other companies attracted by the promise of XML, Moss calls the SGML/HTML follow-on Transformational; the kind of thing that people hoped Java would be. He says Bow Street, a five-person shop which he chairs, will bring XML under the control of IT. Providing cross-platform document automation, access and sharing using XML is one of Bow Street’s aims. Bow Street co-founder and chief executive Jack Serfass ran Windows NT directory services company Preferred Systems Inc which he sold to Computer Associates International Inc’s Cheyenne Software unit back in 1996. SSV’s second venture – though Moss says he’s not a VC concern per se – will be a company co-created with Powershift in Austin, presumably to address the ERP market which Moss says is his other target market. Moss believes the ERP market is full of bloated, outdated packages that take two years to install and integrate and believes they’ll be overtaken be a new class of highly-integrated web-based applications which operate across the front office-back office model. Moss says he’s packing up his IBM kit bag (again) to relocate back to Boston to be with his family. He says he stayed down in Austin far longer than he expected, overseeing the integration of Tivoli with IBM’s network and systems management division after Big Blue’s acquisition of the company Moss left IBM to join in 1991. Tivoli was formed by ex-IBMers frustrated at the company’s lack of client/server systems management strategy back in 1996 (CI No 2,482). Moss will be consulting for Tivoli. IBM’s installed Tivoli president and CEO and VP and general manager of its systems management business Jan Lindelow as Moss’ replacement.
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