Unix systems management tools vendor Open Systems Management Ltd, based in Wokingham, Berkshire, is about to take its first step into the US market together with Leederville, Western Australia-based partner and joint developer Functional Software Pty Ltd. The two companies aim to undertake a cross-shareholding agreement and then set up a US office in the autumn with the help of venture capital funding or by partnering a company with an existing US presence. They will court interested parties at UniForum next week. The ultimate aim is then to back both companies into the US organisation and go public over there, before moving into Japan and Germany. The two firms offer the 16-bit Cosmos systems management tools and application development environment, which is currently sold predominantly into the British and Australian markets. By the end of the year, the product will support the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment, and there are also plans to support Novell Inc’s NetWare via the Novell Distributed Management System, Microsoft Corp’s Windows via Hermes.
