Sema Group Plc, the Anglo-French software house, and Sun Microsystems France have announced an agreement to do a version of Principia Co-operatif, Sema’s software engineering workbench, for the entire Sun Microsystems Inc range. Both companies say that they will be able to offer their clients a Unix-based client-server product for information management applications. This agreement marks Sun’s first product partner in the management applications market, according to Alain Pechon, director general of Sun France. Pechon noted that three years ago, Sun realised no revenues from management applications, but they accounted for 25% of revenues by the end of 1991. Although the agreement is between the French subsidiaries, the product will be made available worldwide. The conversion work will be done in France, and Sun says that it postponed the announcement from January in order to determine how much worldwide support would be required for the product. Neither company is prepared to divulge how much money is involved in the conversion agreement, but Sun plans to devote a staff of 20 in France, which will rise to over 100 worldwide. Pechon says that the agreement is not exclusive in the conventional sense, and that in an open systems world, vendors have to be able to supply anything that their customers demand. Sema says it plans to integrate some technology from its Eureka Software Factory into Principia Co-operatif.
