In the UK, Netwise Inc’s Netwise International Ltd subsidiary, was put into liquidation last week – the firm ceased trading on St Valentine’s Day – owing substantial amounts to its Boulder, Colorado-based parent, and to other UK creditors (CI No 1,872). Meanwhile, Netwise Inc is to continue operations in Europe, re-opening in Crowthorne, Buckinghamshire, as Netwise UK Ltd, with five employees, a country arm of Netwise Europe BV, Amsterdam, Holland. Rob Rietveld, who took over from Don Taylor (now at Sun Microsystems Inc) as European general manager of Netwise International Ltd last August, assumes the same role in the new formation, heading up both the continental and UK operations. Other Netwise country units have been set up in Germany and France. This latest affair is another chapter in the history of the firm, which has some widely acclaimed distributed computing Unix technology, but has generally lacked a coherent marketing strategy and identity. Indeed, after turning over three sets of marketing and sales teams in as many years in the US, it hired Bob Brannon from Intel Corp to head up and sort out the Netwise Inc business, a hard-nosed tough guy, according to Rietveld, who says that prior to the appointment the company wasn’t a well-run organisation. Brannon took over from David Andras, co-founder of Netwise, who remains chief technology architect and is chairman of the board. Netwise International Ltd was set up around three years ago to handle all Netwise business outside North America, but had a big problem with overheads and expenditure, according to Rietveld, who claims its marketing and advertising strategy was a joke. He says the UK-based unit had to go, although he admits that it hurts peoples’ pride and maybe their wallets. Netwise Inc developed the distributed computing technology – RPC Tool – that is used by Sun Microsystems Inc, among others, in its Open Networking Computing system. Rietveld says the company originally tried to do an Oracle or Ingres on RPC Tool, which didn’t work. It’s too technical a product. It will now concentrate, he says, on commercialising the stuff for the mainframe market – a release is expected later in the year – while technical development will be concentrated at the Unix and personal computer level. However, some creditors of Netwise International Ltd, owed thousands of pounds, are less than pleased with the latest turn of events and see the liquidation as a cynical device to evade debts. They say that Netwise Inc’s plans to continue operations in Europe as Netwise UK Ltd and Netwise Europe BV are in apparent breach of Section 312 of the UK’s Insolvency Act of 1986, which bans so-called phoenix operations.

Shadow directors

They say that Netwise Inc and its chief executive officer, Bob Brannon, were shadow directors of Netwise International Ltd, and have pressed the liquidator, London firm Geoffery Pollard & Co, to make a report to the Department of Trade & Industry. Rietveld’s two partners at Netwise UK Ltd and Netwise Europe BV are Bo Ridden and Brian Cassidy. Their investment firm, Westward, based in Holland, has a piece of privately-held Netwise Inc, whose last round of funding was heavily subscribed by it, and Westward sits on its board. Westward’s involvement in the software industry goes back more than a decade to when the three individuals worked for Tom Petersen International, headquartered in the Danish city of Alborg (which co-incidentally, situated on the Jutland peninsula, is regarded as the geographical centre of Europe). Tom Petersen held the European distribution rights for Oracle Corp’s earliest products, when the database firm was no more than Larry Ellison plus half a dozen others. Ellison got the European distribution rights back from Denmark in return for a lucrative chunk of Oracle equity, which the Danish firm sold on at a large profit. As part of the re-organisation at Sun Microsystems Inc’s European operations, former vice-president and European general manager of Netwise International Ltd Don Taylor has been appointed director

of marketing for the Northern Europe area, responsible for the UK, the Nordic countries, Netherlands and Belgium. With a team of 28, he reports to Bill Passmore, Sun’s vice-president of Northern Europe. Taylor is looking for Sun’s server business in the UK to grow 50% a year over the next three years.