If anybody still cares, this is Mark Hunter's article on latest Centura Pro (http://www.propublishing.com/).
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Here's a Tip...
by Mark Hunter
First and foremost, our thanks to all the developers who sent in tips for this tip blowout issue. Centura Pro heard from lots of new authors with lots of good ideas. You'll see the results all through this issue. And as we go to press, more tips are still coming in, so look for them in April.
Checking in
We caught up with Centura's new management recently, stealing an hour from them as they conducted a hectic week of planning meetings with Centura's domestic and international staff. We talked with Scott Broomfield, CEO, Kathy Lane, VP of Marketing, and Lionel Carrasco, a longtime Centura employee recently promoted to Manager of Business Development.
Broomfield shed some light on the unusual way that the new management team arrived. He is a principal in Hickey and Hill, a consulting firm specializing in turnarounds of troubled companies. They were one of several contacted by Centura's board of directors in September 1997 to search for ways to improve Centura's profitability. Hickey and Hill prevailed in that selection process with an unusual proposal: While other firms asked for large cash payments to send in their management teams, H&H requested relatively small payments, plus stock options which will reward them if the turnaround is successful.
Broomfield said that his personal decision to take on Centura's turnaround resulted from favorable answers to three questions he researched: 1) Do Centura's products have the ability to compete on a technical level?; 2) Can they be profitable as well as technically successful?; and 3) Is there a pool of good people at Centura capable of pulling off a turnaround?
During the selection process, the board of directors gave the old management team, headed by Sam Inman, one more opportunity to demonstrate progress. This deadline occurred at about the same time as the Munich conference, and Inman was unable to deliver. This, along with the termination of the InfoSpinner agreement, produced the awkward situation in which Hickey and Hill's team showed up for the conference with no prior public announcement, talking about a completely new company agenda. Subsequent introductions in the U.S. were also somewhat disorganized, with different customers and partners getting the news in different ways.
However, the new management is now firmly established, and they seem to have clear ideas about where they want to go. Our readers' number one question is: "What will happen to the tools?", and I put the question to management. They responded that the tools are essential to the company's overall business plan-Centura does not plan to simply become a SQLBase company. But they wish to avoid empty promises, as typified by the grand plans for Tomahawk. Centura Team Developer version 1.2 is in the works, with an emphasis on being a good OLE client. There's a version 1.3 in planning, with hopes of adding the ability to create (non-visual) OCX servers. Other possible features are dynamic instantiation, and "surfacing" the SQLBase interface to CTD, so that applications can take on database creation, backup, and administration tasks. Broomfield and Lane emphasized that future product descriptions are being guided by customer requests.
Since the ForeSite divorce, much work has gone into enhancing the original Application Server that supported Centura Web Developer. Future versions will feature better performance and the ability to support more simultaneous applications.
Although there was some mention in previous announcements that Centura is considering writing a Pure Java development tool in the future, it's unlikely that they would actually write such a tool from scratch. A better possibility is Centura teaming up with some other Java tool vendor, with Centura contributing database technology to a company that doesn't already have it.
Of course, it's widely known that the new management team is intrigued by SQLBase's possibilities, and many plans are afoot. As Microsoft SQL Server scales up to the enterprise, SQLBase is heading in the opposite direction. For example, there's a copy of SQLBase in each of Xerox's color printers. A new "SQLBase Lite" is aimed at similar appliance-type markets. And plans for a "pocket SQLBase" call for it to run in a footprint of 100K of RAM, with portability across operating systems and replication. Centura plans to put the SQLBase database, and the engine itself, onto smart cards. Taking advantage of these versions of SQLBase will require some new thinking on the part of our enterprise-application-developer readers, but the opportunities are interesting.
As this is written, release of last quarter's earnings is imminent, but everything is waiting on Centura's negotiations with Computer Associates regarding the $10MM note that comes due in April. I personally don't want to see CA become the majority owner of Centura Software Corp., so I'm hoping that Hickey and Hill have some financial wizardry up their sleeve.
Where's my tip?
This issue is full of technical tips, but I haven't written one. How about a tip to Centura management instead?
Learn from your international customers. Centura has a strong reputation and a great developer base in Europe, Australia, and other nations, yet it is doing poorly in the U.S. Research this strength and find ways to MAKE YOUR AMERICAN DEVELOPERS PROUD TO TALK ABOUT YOUR PRODUCTS AGAIN.
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( Centura: Are you listening????!!!! ) |
