Banking and dealing room software house Kapiti Ltd reckons that it is reaping the rewards of investment in new product development, and the fact that it has spread itself over a wide geographical area. The Slough, Berkshire company has offices in about 20 countries, looking after sales and local support; has over 700 customer sites in 72 countries; and supplies software to over 500 banks. This means, according to public relations chief Jane Keegan, that the risk is spread – we haven’t got all our eggs in one basket, she says. And the group intends to continue expanding – it is now in the process of opening two new offices, one in the Far East, the other in South America. It also intends to open a third operation in Europe later in the year. Although Kapiti will not release its figures for about a month because they have yet to be audited, Ms Keegan estimated that turnover has increased by about 20% on last year. And to give a rough idea of where the group makes its money, she cited breakdown of turnover by geographic area. Although the figures relate to 1991, she did add that things are unlikely to have changed much this year. Europe, including the UK, generated 60% of total revenues; the Americas brought in 22%; the Far East, 13%; and the Middle East, Africa and Australia, 5%. While Ms Keegan could also provide no figures with regard to market share, she reckons Kapiti is now the second largest software supplier to the banking and financial systems market. Although the firm still ranks behind Nynex Corp’s Norwell, Massachussetts-based BIS Strategic Decisions, it is nonetheless catching up fast, she said. Kapiti will spend about 18% of 1993 turnover on research and development.
Flagship product
Last year’s new offerings included version 4.0 of the group’s Fist dealing room system, which runs on Digital Equipment Corp’s VAX machines, VMS, and the Unix variants of Hewlett-Packard Co, Sun Microsystems Inc, IBM Corp, and NeXT Inc; Grace, a graphical application environment for Fist, which is now X Window-compliant; Equinox, a personal computer-based banking package, for 80386 and 80486-based machines, and was launched in the US at the end of October 1992; Archive II, a optical disk storage device, also released at the end of last year; personal computer-based Freeform GRS for regualatory reporting; Co-Sign, a signature verification package; and Retail Advantage, a cashier package of banks, for the AS/400 and not yet on general release. Kapiti’s flagship product is Equation, an AS/400-based back-office banking system, launched in 1988. This generates some 50% of total revenues, and Ms Keegan says Kapiti is working towards Posix-compliance. Enhancements will be made to Equation and other products this year, with development of an object-oriented version on the cards.
