NetManage Inc Cupertino, California, is looking to shed a bunch of products as it tries to climb back into the black after losing $5.7m on revenue of $104.6m in 1996. Its plan is to break even this year and make a profit in 1998. NetManage started out as a TCP/IP software company but that market disappeared and it’s been trying to reposition itself as an application concern. But after reorganizing around four key product lines – Chameleon Unix and host connectivity, Z-Mail (which it acquired from Network Computing Devices Inc) and Personal Information Manager – it found itself still playing in too many markets and stuck with products that it didn’t want. Some have already gone and some are still seeking buyers. Up for sale is the IntraChange website management software, Macintosh connectivity technologies plus some other X Windows and TCP/IP components. NetManage bought its Macintosh connectivity products from Apple Computer Inc and has been unsuccessfully trying to sell them back to it; not surprising given Apple’s perilous state. The product is worth $1m in revenues to it, but NetManage has spent $2m developing it. It’s slimmed down to 500 employees now from 700 this time last year. NetManage has consolidated the 15 X Windows products it once offered into a single called Chameleon UnixLink 97 which is built upon the latest web-enabled Broadway release of X Windows and enables X applications to run over internet protocols and be displayed within a web browser. It costs $400 and users can cherry-pick features and functions from a single CD. It’ll be further tailored for use on network computer devices and a Java makeover is promised. NetManage says Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s recent dissing of Chameleon UnixLink 97 is simply a bad case of jealousy as SCO’s only just started to offer a single CD packaging for its own Vision 97 connectivity products and some of the Tarantella technology that SCO is currently demonstrating in beta form is already available from NetManage (UX No 639). In July the company will overhaul its Chameleon HostLink mainframe connectivity software with additional emulation options. These two core products – Chameleon UnixLink and HostLink – live alongside an emerging product group which includes the Ecco personal information manager, Z-Mail and OpSession remote application sharing software. NetManage still has 45 people from its 1995 AGE Logic Inc acquisition working on the X server technology in San Diego, California.
