Revenues for the first quarter of 1996 (ending March 31, 1996) were $15.4 million compared to revenues of $17.4 million for the first quarter of 1995. The company reported a loss of $44.1 million and a loss per share of $3.62 for the year ended December 31, 1995, compared to a loss of $31.8 million and a loss per share of $2.66 for 1994. The fiscal 1995 loss included approximately $10.6 million in restructuring and one-time charges associated with the company's financial restructuring and $15.3 million for the settlement and related legal expenses of its shareholder class-action lawsuit. For the first quarter of 1996, the company reported a profit of $321,000 and earnings per share of $0.03 compared to a $3.7 million loss and $0.30 loss per share for the first quarter of 1995.
Finally, immediately following the annual shareholder meeting in August, the company officially became Centura Software Corp. and ceased all operations under the name of Gupta. You will never see the words "formerly Gupta Corp." again. I, for one, am relieved. Contact Centura Software Corp., 415-617-8500 or fax 415-321-5471; http://www.centurasoft.com.
ParcPlace-Digitalk Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Objectshare Systems Inc., a privately held Silicon Valley company that makes graphical application development tools based on object technology for Smalltalk and Java environments. The acquisition is intended to strengthen ParcPlace-Digitalk Inc.'s strategy for delivering multilingual products for distributed computing. Following the completion of the acquisition, Objectshare will become an independent business unit of ParcPlace-Digitalk Inc. Contact ParcPlace-Digitalk Inc., 408-481-9090 or fax 408-481-9095; http://www.parcplace.com.
The company was touring to promote its soon-to-be-released Performer product, a component-based, model-driven application development environment for workgroups. The Software Business Unit is trying to break free of TI's straight-laced corporate reputation. To this end, I was briefed not only on the product but also on the fact that the group has a no-tie dress code and free reign to adopt its own entrepreneurial spirit. The product is proof that the culture change is working.
To build an application in Performer, you work with three diagrams: a Window Design diagram that defines the visual and event attributes of an application's interface, a Data Design diagram that creates a data model of your application, and a Logic Design diagram that provides high-level scripting language and wizards to help define application logic. You work with visual models to describe the application; Performer then uses the Symantec C++ compiler that ships with the product to generate all of the source code (it also supports Microsoft MSVC++ compiler).
My favorite part of the product, however, is the Chat feature that lets you send notes to fellow programmers working on the same project. TI Software discovered the secret truth about developers (and editors, I confess), namely that we don't particularly like verbal communication. Keep an eye out for a more in-depth look at this product in a future issue of DBMS. Contact Texas Instruments Software, 214-575-2000 or fax 214-575-6810; http://www.ti.com/software.
Arbor Gets its Day
A company faring much better than Centura is Arbor Software Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), which reported a dizzying 94 percent revenue growth for the first quarter ending June 30, 1996, compared to the same period last year. Revenues for the period increased to $9.3 million from $4.8 million in Q1 1995, and they increased 113 percent from $8.2 million for Q4 1995 (ended March 31, 1996). The company credits this growth to a strong demand for the latest release of Essbase 4.0, Arbor's multidimensional database server. Revenues are expected to increase with the release of the Essbase Web Gateway later this year. Contact Arbor Software Corp., 408-727-5800 or fax 408-727-7140; http://
www.arborsoft.com.
The Partnerships Continue
Allaire Corp. (Minneapolis, Minn.) and Seagate Software, IMG (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) announced plans to integrate a special version of Seagate Software's Crystal Reports Professional into Allaire's Web database development tool, Cold Fusion Professional. This union will let Web developers use Crystal Report's query and visual report development tools for their Internet and Intranet applications, and it will let existing Crystal Reports customers incorporate their reports into database-driven Web applications. Contact Allaire Corp., 612-832-9030 or fax 612-830-1090; http://www.allaire.com.
Tales from Texas
I get many requests for vendor briefings, and as much as my schedule permits I try to oblige. I must confess that sometimes I'd rather stay at my desk and finish my editing, but once in a while I see a product that leaves me inspired to write more than just the straight facts. I recently had such a meeting with, of all surprises, Texas Instruments Software Workgroup Solutions Business Unit (Plano, Texas), a division of Texas Instruments Inc. (TI). Perhaps I was cynical because I associated Texas Instruments with the calculator I got in high school and not with the high-tech client/server application development world I work in today. I hereby stand corrected.
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