The formation of a billion dollar software products company by Computer Associates Inc is putting pressure on other software products companies to grow at a faster rate than is possible organically, and on Friday, to of the most acquisitive of the smaller players – Morino Associates Inc, Vienna, Virginia and Duquesne Systems Inc, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, signed letters of intent to merge to create a $100m-a-year business with a $60m war-chest for further acquisitions. Under the merger plan, a new corporation – name as yet undecided – will be formed in which Duquesne shareholders will get one share for each Duquesne they hold, Morino 0.8684 for each Morino, so that the former end up with about 55% of the merged company, the latter 45%. Mario Morino will be chairman and Glen Chatfield of Duquesne the president of the new company. Morino’s strongest suit, performance measurement software for IBM users will be complemented by Duquesne’s performance and optimisation products. Duquesne is also has TPX, a terminal session management and productivity product, and also has a package, STX, that enables users at 3270 terminals to log onto X25 services such as Telenet without the need for additional terminals or modems (CI No 615). In 1985 it teamed up with VM Software Inc to market a useful utility for backing up to tape from different IBM operating systems without operator intervention (CI No 299). VM is eager to expand – perhaps it would like to join the party. Morino did $8.5m net on sales of $44.7m for the year to June, and $1.6m on $11.1m for first quarter fiscal 1989; Duquesne did $11.1m on sales of $50.3m in the year to September. Mike Cocks, who runs Morino in Europe, will be international chief.
