Recovering from its IPO that was, according to chairman and CEO Stuart Frost, too hyped for the reality of its situation, Select Software Tools Inc is hoping the emergence of a viable market for software components can finally deliver it from relative obscurity. After cutting staff, purging management and consolidating facilities, the Cheltenham, UK-based company which has its US base in Irvine, California aims to get back into the black by the end of its fourth quarter in December, expecting to ride out an interim period of 18 months before components become big business. Frost believes enterprises are waking up to the fact that data, information and other services need to be organized into components to be transportable between different systems and applications within its organization. In turn they’ll put pressure on their ISVs to open up application interfaces so information can be straightforwardly captured. The only effective way to get and post this data is by creating portable components, Frost says, using Select’s Component Factory. Select is already working closely with IBM’s San Francisco Java component environment and points to Lawson Software Inc as having the most open interfaces. PeopleSoft, SAP, Baan and others have paid lip service to publishing APIs, not enough to understand application behavior and develop meaningful components. They are reluctant because this will open up the opportunity for component architectures to attack them in the marketplace. Microsoft’s two- tier client/server and database architecture is the most difficult to prise open Select says. Microsoft’s DCOM component architecture is great for Microsoft environments but it has limited cross-platform functionality. The COM-on-Unix ports will amount to zip, Frost thinks. That’s why Microsoft has cut a deal with Iona Technologies Ltd. It needs links to the enterprise, therefore it needs Corba, ergo Iona. It gives IBM has an opportunity to box Microsoft in on Windows and NT, Frost thinks. Component Factory is being fitted with Corba and EJB enterprise Java beans in addition to COM. It supports Unisys, Microsoft and SoftLabs repositories. Select recently secured $5.7m funding through Transamerica Technology and can draw a further $6.3m if it needs to. It has issued $4m convertible debentures to from Reichmann International which is supplying the credit line through Transamerica. Select has 200 staff, and all development takes place in its UK office in Cheltenham. Revenues from US operations matched European revenue last quarter, and are exceed to exceed them this quarter. Select recently reported a third quarter net loss of $5.83m compared with $3.36m last time on revenue up 41% at $5.38m compared with $4.13m. At the nine month mark the net loss was $12.07m compared with $3.08m on revenue up 18% at $19.43m over $16.46m.
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