Qualix Group, which tomorrow will be re-born as FullTime Software Inc, is betting the company on the emerging demand for software that manages resources across clustered systems and maintains application and data availability in the event of failure or planned downtime. Qualix started out in 1990 distributing Unix software. Soon after it began to dabble in high-availability with a series of point products bought, licensed and developed internally. While it made $2.7m on revenues of $32.1m in 1997, CEO Richard Thau said it became clear that a new product strategy and management team was required if Qualix was going to grow significantly above the $30m mark. It went to the market and raised $22m in an initial public offering – of which $16m went into its pocket and the rest to venture backers – hired new executive management and sales teams, including VP marketing Rebel Brown, and got to work knitting together existing products and new technology acquired from Stratus Computer Inc into the FullTime suite for managing systems, applications and data across Unix and NT clusters. However one significant investor apparently got tired of waiting for the suite, which will be unveiled tomorrow along with the company name change, and dumped its holding leaving the share price to tank at around $2, its low watermark for the year. Thau says he expects he expects FullTime to take hits for at least another quarter as the product line comes on stream. In the first three quarters of this year Qualix has lost $3.7m on sales of $23.5m. It claims it still has $14m of the $16m IPO money it raised sitting in the bank. Thau says Qualix Direct, the software distribution arm, accounted for some 20% of its business but will be sold off if a buyer can be found.
