Grafpoint Inc, San Jose, California is branching out into the world of Digital Equipment Corp emulation software, offering a range of new VT terminal emulation products for Unix workstations and Microsoft Corp Windows systems. Grafpoint has effectively stripped out the VT emulation elements that are already built into its better-known Tektronix Inc graphics emulation software, TGRAF, and is selling them separately. Prices go from $250 for a single user licence to GT-320 for Windows and $850 for GT-X 340 on Sun Microsystems Inc, IBM Corp or Hewlett-Packard Co workstations. Server and site licences are also available. If the company can win just a few percentage points of the VT emulation market, it will effectively double its revenue, claims Carl Koppel vice-president of sales and marketing. Koppel, a former Santa Cruz Operation Inc marketing manager, who was also responsible for UK firm JSB Computer Systems Ltd’s Scotts Valley, California start-up, was drafted into Grafpoint last year, along with president and chief executive officer, Howard Berke, to carve out a new strategy and rescue the firm from what was effectively a holding position. Grafpoint’s founders fell out around three years ago and one of those, Charles Lingel, now chief technical officer, bought his partner out in a lengthy and disruptive parting of ways. Koppel says the privately-held firm will now progress by technology partnerships, merger, or by getting itself acquired, and sees Grafpoint as a $10m business within three years – it’s at around $3.5m now, going by market share indicators. The majority of its business is the TGRAF Tektronix graphics emulation software offered for Unix, Windows, Macintosh and MS-DOS systems. That’s a guaranteed earner for three or four years yet, argues Koppel. Tektronix Inc is no longer manufacturing its graphics terminals (it got out of workstations a couple of years ago after an unsuccessful flirtation with the Motorola Inc 88000 RISC) and is looking to sell its entire X display business – which is around twice the size of Grafpoint – to re-focus on its printer division.
Robust commdity items
Grafpoint has a roll-call of users that rely on its cheap Tektronix graphics emulation software to run their businesses. It expects to move these users, like Chevron and Dow in the US, up from MS-DOS versions to Windows, Unix and (in future) Windows NT implementations before they move on to other technologies. Grafpoint claims TGRAF has 70% of that market. Grafpoint’s X Window server for personal computers, X/One, supports the Tektronix Serial Xpress protocol, and has a 3% overall share of the PC X server market, with some 3,500 licensees, around 20% of Grafpoint’s business. At from $300, the company believes X/One offers the cheapest PC X server software available, and says it will have a complete set of features, including DECnet communications and a TCP/IP protocol stack up under the environment within three months. Koppel expects there to be imminent consolidation in the PC X server market amongst third-party suppliers as X servers become robust commodity items and begin to feature standard tools and components. All the suppliers, for instance, are expected to have Window NT clients ready by the first quarter of 1994 – they have to put their technologies up on Microsoft’s TCP/IP stack rather than using their own implementations. Outside [market leaders] Hummingbird Communications Ltd and Network Computing Devices Inc, all the third party PC X players [including Grafpoint] could be up for grabs, in the shakeout, says Koppel. The talking has begun already. Grafpoint’s UK distributor is Tektronix outlet, Technology Ventures Ltd, Luton, Bedfordshire.
