In an effort to reverse a large fall in earnings, VMark Software Inc, Westboro, Massachusetts, is handing future development of its ObjectStudio to Cincom Systems Inc, Cincinnati, Ohio, as part of a plan by new CEO and president Robert Morrill to refocus on its core products – the UniVerse RDBMS server and its HyperStar middleware. It sees data warehousing as its future money maker. VMark and Cincom won’t decide who keeps ultimate ownership of the product until sometime in June and neither would comment on how much they plan to invest in the venture. It appears that VMark doesn’t want to spend any more money on ObjectStudio and if Cincom wants to continue using it with its Total FrameWork object application development environment, it’ll have to foot the bill. Last week VMark shut down its development center in San Diego and gave 37 people pink slips. It’s possible that ObjectStudio was responsible for the high expenses which VMark blames for its 63% plunge in first quarter earnings. Revenues were static for the same period. VMark says it has two more stages of its data warehousing strategy to roll out over the remainder of the year. ObjectStudio came with the acquisition of Easel Corp, Burlington, Massachusetts, under CEO and president James Capeless, who was demoted to executive vice president for international operations recently, and who, not surprisingly, left the company this month.
