Aonix targets commercial, technical markets - Interactive Development Environment and Thomson Software Products joint venture - Company Business and Marketing - Brief Article

Software Magazine, Jan, 1997 by Julekha Dash

In a play to provide an end-to-end tools solution, Interactive Development Environment (IDE), San Francisco, and Thomson Software Products, Norwalk, Conn., joined forces in mid-November. The offspring, Aonix, will receive financial backing from Thomson-CSF, the world's third largest electronics company and parent of Thomson Software Products. The two companies claim combined 1996 revenue of around $75 million.

IDE, which offers object-oriented modeling, analysis and design tools, and Thomson, a maker of development, data access and decision support tools, intend to link their complementary technologies to provide solutions for both the commercial and technical markets. To that end, IDE's key product family, Software through Pictures (StP), will be integrated with Thomson's offerings, including Ada development tools, TeleUse GUI builder, and Nomad application development, decision support and report generation tools.

While discussing plans for the merger, the two firms discovered they had many of the same customers, says Bob Goodwin, COO of Aonix and former COO of Thomson Software Products, "What was lacking," he says, "was any form of integration between [our] technologies." One of the new company's top priorities will be to integrate StP with Thomson's Ada development tools, says Goodwin. "We are seeing numerous opportunities where our customers are asking for this integration. We consider this to be one of the strong points that we have in the discussions with our current customer base." A company that traditionally focused on technical accounts, IDE can now move forward in the commercial arena thanks to Thomson's large commercial base, says Chris Kenber, CEO of Aonix and former CEO of IDE. "Switching a company from the technical market to the commercial market takes a lot more than just deciding to do it, so we see that as being a pretty significant advantage," Kenber says.

John Rymer, an analyst with the Giga Information Group, agrees that transitioning from the technical to the commercial market is difficult, but adds that IDE needs more than just access to commercial customers to be successful. "It's going to require a lot of work to penetrate the commercial market. I don't think it's automatic. I think the opportunity is definitely there but they have to execute on that," he says. IDE needs both good marketing and product planning, as well as professional services people who understand the commercial industry, says Rymer. "Commercial is where the big growth is," he adds.

Rymer says the sheer size of Aonix will make them attractive to customers. Many competing vendors are considerably smaller -- in the $10 to 20 million range. Customers who spend serious money on enterprise software need assurances that the vendor will be in operation several years down the road. "That's an important factor in the customers' thinking because a $10 million company is a risky bet to make when you're buying an enterprise tool," Rymer says.