Far more professional were the U.S. and former Soviet agents who showed special interest in the recent Moscow visit by Talus Corporation President Steve Sarich. Maybe they misunderstood his comments about NeXT being a competitive weapon. In any event, Sarich returned from Russia with an RFP for an "enterprisewide imaging and workflow system" for Boris Yeltsin's office. Armed with this prospective high-profile sale, Sarich flew on to Redwood City, where he patched up past differences with NeXT in a meeting with Peter van Cuylenburg. Result: The former bad boy of the NeXT market has sewn up VAR rights for Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine. Potentially more significant is the development shop Sarich is planning to set up with Russian programmers. The $30 per month he will pay is ten times the average wage for a Russian worker.
Van Cuylenburg has made other waves in his first few weeks on the job. Among his first moves was to convert a NeXT conference room into an improvised "war room" to refine and sharpen NeXT marketing strategies. The custom-apps strategy is solidly in place, but company thinkers have been hunkered down figuring out how to enhance it with a broader message. Sullivan hears they are focusing on NeXT's advantages in integration and collaboration. Stay tuned.
What's faster than a speeding Turbo but slower than a RISC workstation? Nobody seems to know the name, but now that Motorola has begun sampling 40MHz '040s, power-hungry customers are queuing up for shipment this year.
Graphics users are going to want that power for the spate of image-editing apps nearing the starting gate. Appsoft Image, now bearing little resemblance to its Pixelist ancestor, has been quietly shown. Lt. Sullivan's short peek at it revealed a fast and powerful application. Also, 3K Computerbild and another European company both have serious competitors in fine shape. Meanwhile, Adobe continues to play its Photoshop card very close to the vest. Nevertheless, it looks like the NeXT publishing message is due for a strong boost by fall.
Adamation's Who's Calling is about to experience mitosis. The calendar module will be splitting from Who's Calling to become a separate application. Who's Calling 3.0 will be getting an abbreviated, simpler version. The new calendar app, as yet unnamed, will be reoutfitted as a groupware scheduling solution. Lt. Sullivan votes for What's Happening as the name for the new app.
Adobe is hard at work porting Display PostScript to X11R5/Motif to run on SPARC workstations. The first application following right on its release will be Adobe Illustrator. A PostScript previewer will be bundled with DPS, and the famous Adobe Type Library will eventually be made available as well.
Just when people started complaining that there would never be another update to NewsGrazer, version 72.2 was placed on the Internet archives. What, you didn't see it? It was promptly removed a few days later upon discovery of a hidden TIFF image of a devil. Shades of Proctor and Gamble. NewsGrazer 72.3 should have been posted by the time you read this.
Absoft Corporation, not to be confused with the recently refinanced Appsoft Corporation, has found a ready audience for its Fortran products in the NeXT market. Now Lt. Sullivan has learned that a full suite of C++ tools for NeXTSTEP is currently under consideration.
After placing a call to Boss Logic, Sullivan wondered what dirty trickster planted those rumors about the document-management company leaving the NeXT market. Now that Frame Technology has purchased its 18-to-20-percent stake in Boss Logic (Menlo Partners also has a matching share), Sullivan wondered about the impact on the document-management company. It's true that Motif and Windows ports of BDMS are underway. The good news for NeXT true believers is that Boss's products should have more impact in the NeXT shrinkwrapped app market with Frame's sales force behind them.
The Lt. Sullivan T-shirts were not touched by the looters thanks to Graciela's diligence and locked cabinet. If you want one honestly, the price is an inside tip. Call my voice-mail at 415-978-3374 or send me e-mail at sullivan@nextworld.com.