Hitchin, Hertfordshire-based Software Generation UK Ltd has spent four years making a living out of distributing US software such as Aion Corp’s ADS expert system development environment and the Viasoft Inc maintenance software suite. One past partner was software engineering outfit Sage Software Inc, but after the Index Technology-Sage merger which gave the world Intersolv Inc, Software Generation managing director Vic Morris was handed a cheque for UKP3m and told thanks for the memory. Morris has not spent the money on a yacht: instead he’s ploughed the money back into a fresh approach to business. As predicted (CI No 1,783), Software Generation has reflected on its strategy and decided the way forward is joint ventures with US software companies rather than distribution, and the first fruit is a complex deal with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Guidance Technologies Inc. Guidance’s product, Choreographer, is an object-oriented graphical user interface builder for client-server applications, aimed at Fortune 500 companies, which are predominantly IBM MVS shops typically stepping into the waters of personal computers, OS/2 and icons for the very first time. Like whom, you ask apart from American Airlines (which, like Barclays Bank and British Telecom, most everyone can quote because they’re so big they buy a copy of everything), users include UPS, which is going to standardise on Choreographer for all non-North American client-server based systems – plus Union Carbide, MCI Communications Ltd (which has 10,000 licences) Bell Canada, Sikorsky Aircraft and Nokia Data. Example client-server applications include factory floor management systems, travel reservation systems, international telephone network monitoring and an unnamed US bank’s new teller system. The Choreographer product is the fruit of five years’ development work, and delivers client-server applications in OS/2 and Windows 3.0, stemming from research into human computer interaction using Lisp by chairman and chief technical officer Jeff Bonar, previously on the faculty of Pittsburgh University. Some 90% of Choreographer customers use OS/2, so in those sites the marketing success of Windows remains a possible mirage; the company is also working on a Motif version. As part of the deal with Guidance, a new holding company, Software Generation International BV, will own 50% of Guidance Europe and also own a stake of undisclosed size in Guidance itself, big enough at any rate to warrant a board seat. The Choreographer product will be made available in Europe through Software Generation’s Benelux arm, which will hold European distribution rights and employ five staff. Development licences begin at at UKP6,500, and run-time versions start at UKP500. – Gary Flood
