Ailing Apertus Technologies Inc has given up trying to make money from the IBM Corp middleware market and is heading for the promised land of data warehousing. The Eden Prarie, Minnesota- based company is buying fast-growing data extraction company Carleton Corp for 20% of its outstanding stock plus a $2m note and has at the same time sold its internet-to-mainframe connectivity software division to Computer Network Technology Corp for $11.4m. Apertus Carleton Corp will come up with a new name and corporate identity in three to four months to reflect its new focus on the data warehousing market. It’ll supposedly begin life debt-free and with $20m cash, which it will spend to acquire niche technology and services companies. CNT, which specializes in re-engineering existing applications for use over internet networks and did $97m sales in 1996, is acquiring products that generated $25m revenue in the last four quarters. Apertus has not made an annual profit since 1995 and lost $0.5m on revenue of $7.2m in its last fiscal quarter. It recently sold its MQSeries middleware management tools to Candle Corp for $7.4m. Apertus chief executive Robert Gordon is to be chairman and CEO of Apertus Carleton; Carleton CEO Paul Fluckiger is president and COO. Carleton is best known for its Passport tools which suck database information up into a data warehouse, but the focus of the new company will be Carleton’s MetaCenter framework, which provides a set of APIs enabling developers to write applications that can utilize a variety of third party tools. Currently supporting Passport, Software AG SourcePoint and Intellidex warehouse subscription tools, Apertus’ Enterprise Integration is currently being integrated. Going forward MetaCenter will support the forthcoming Microsoft Corp Repository APIs; the company expects the Metadata Coalition’s effort to create standards in the area will die a slow death. It says the data warehouse tools market currently has no established leader and to be successful a company must integrate a slew of third party tools with core services and some standard APIs. It wants to bring the price point of a complete set of MetaCenter products up to around $1m from $0.5m today, which it thinks will provide warehouse customers enough choice of tools. Apertus and CNT will both take charges against their current quarters. The new company has 90 employees and 140 licensees and expects to generate $12m revenue in the next 12 months. Apertus Carleton will be headquartered in Eden Prairie, and will maintain a sales and development operation in Carleton’s Massachusetts headquarters. It expects to add staff.
