Cognos Software Inc’s PowerCase, and Information Builders’ Focus are both architectured around Systematica Ltd’s CASE tool builder Virtual Software Factory, and the Bournemouth-based company now says that two major Silicon Valley software houses are about to announce plans to use the Software Factory in the development of new products, while a Scandinavian telecommunications firm will be using it for developing a customer services system. Introduced around two years ago, the Ada-based Virtual Software Factory, with around 350,000 lines of code, was originally written for Sun Microsystems’ Sun-3 workstations, and can be configured for a number of design methodologies, including the UK government-specified SSADM, the European Space Agency’s HOOD and the French Merise system. At last week’s Software Tools ’90 exhibition in London’s Wembley Exhibition Centre, Systematica’s marketing director Michael Fish revealed that VSF has now been implemented for Sun’s Sparcstation running under SunView, DEC’s MIPS RISC-based DECstations using DECWindows, IBM’s PS/2 running OS/2 – prices start at around UKP8,500 – and it is also currently being migrated to run under OSF/Motif in response to customer demand. In addition Fish says that the Software Factory will be up and running on IBM’s RS/6000 by the beginning of next year – once the company gets a machine on which it can do the porting work and Systematica is currently looking at the possibility of putting it up under the OSF/1 operating system whenever that arrives. The firm is also working on support for the US-favoured Yourdon methodology, as well as what it calls meta-case technology in which the methodology components are kept entirely separate from the core generator modules. Systematica has around 50 employees, and had orders totalling UKP3.3m to the year ending in April, however Fish expects this to increase significantly when royalties from third-party developer and distribution deals are expected to kick in – DEC signed to distribute Virtual Software Factory across Europe last year.
