Now that Advanced Visual Systems Inc has the Uniras A/S acquisition firmly under its belt, it will both start integrating elements of the latter’s graphics visualisation software into its next generation of products, and begin focusing on new markets. In the past, the Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm has targeted its interactive three-dimensional graphics and visualisation packages at the end-user technical and scientific market. But it is now busy developing these products into a framework that developers can use to build applications for specific vertical markets. This means giving developers access to various interfaces, subroutines and drivers and providing them with ways of administering the software. Certain elements of Uniras’s two-dimensional presentation graphics and visual data analysis kit will also be incorporated into the framework, including two-dimensional graphics and plotting capabilities – areas in which Advanced Visual has been traditionally weak. Uniras software should be completely integrated with Advanced Visual’s own by 1995 or 1996. The new products should be available by early summer 1994, but the group says they will not be sold solely to applications developers – end-users will still be able to use them too. Nonetheless, it does expect to generate about half its revenues from developers and the run-time applications they produce within three years. Advanced Visual says it is also keen to move into more commercial markets, such as financial and statistical analysis. It already has one or two customers here, but intends to invest more in these areas over the next year or so – and it reckons that putting its products up under Microsoft Corp’s Windows NT, planned for next year, will help it achieve this goal. Moreover, the company says, once it has digested the Uniras purchase – in about a year’s time – it will be back on the acquisition trail as a way of growing its business still further – Advanced Visual says it intends to go public within two years.
