By Simon Hodgson
Simulus Ltd, a UK-based performance and scalability testing tools start-up, is in the middle of a second round of funding and is planning to enter the US market. Although only established in June, its revenue expectations are steep, 2m pounds ($3.2m) in the first year of operation, 8m ($12.9m) in year two and 20m ($32.4m) by June 2002, when a flotation is scheduled. The first round of investment last year from MTI Partners yielded 1.5m pounds. The second, to be completed by December, will win the company an additional 2m ($3.2m). The business plan calls for US cash for the third round, and vice president of marketing Tim Waterston says he expects anything from $5m to $10m from US venture capitalists.
Originally established to sell to Oracle database customers, Oxford-based Simulus has broadened its offerings to include the R/3 enterprise resource planning system of German vendor SAP AG. Simulus’ SIMperformer uses data probes that sit on the target system and send back information on how it is configured. The company’s predictive performance management technology constructs virtual models of the R/3 system to run scalability tests for tens of thousands of users without jeopardizing the original system. Waterston estimates that there are 300 large companies in the UK which have both SAP and Oracle, and reckons the US numbers to be bigger by a factor of three or four.
Simulus is confident that its technology will complement traditional performance management firms and is currently in negotiations about a possible distribution deal with an unnamed $1bn company. The plan is to gain a foothold in the US market through such a deal. In addition, the company is not satisfied with names like Oracle and SAP. Simulus says it will be releasing software that optimizes data storage on EMC Corp’s intelligent storage sub-systems in the third or fourth quarter next year.
