Despite the ravaged state of Alsys SA, French state-controlled Thomson-CSF SA was not the only suitor for the Ada compiler specialist (CI No 1,775), and others that looked at the company included Control Data Corp in partnership with Compagnie Generale de l’Informatique SA, but they walked away when they saw the extent of the company’s financial problems: Ada originator and company founder Jean Ichbiah is the first casualty of the deal; his new role is described as consultant; the company failed to make much impact in its home market, where only 10% of Ada applications are non-military, compared with 30% in the US, according to 01 Informatique; others, such as Verdix Corp and Denmark’s DDC International A/S have managed to do rather better out of Ada, Verdix by marrying its development environment with C to take advantage of the proliferation of the Unix language; at the time of its acquisition by Thomson-CSF, engineered by the French government, Alsys was in administration after the parent company reported losses equivalent to $22m on turnover of only $7m for 1990 – and a debt burden of $20m.
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