V3.co.uk

Cyrano formed from merger of two testing companies

By Caroline Gabriel

0 Comments

Two specialists in the field of software testing, Performance Software and IMM, have merged to form a new entity, Cyrano.

Although UK-based Performance acquired French company IMM, the new organisation will be based in Paris and its chairman will be IMM?s founder, Philippe Eyries. Eyries is the technical brain of Cyrano and will also be chief technology officer. Trevor Read, formerly president of Performance, will be chief executive and will remain in the UK.

The company, which does 40-45 per cent of its business in the US, also has a US headquarters in Boston and plans to float on the Nasdaq exchange next year. In the meantime, the acquisition was financed by share exchanges, with the senior management the main stockholders. The company has also raised $9 million in venture capital this year to finance product extensions, geographical expansion and a marketing drive.

The product sets will be combined and repackaged, but no elements need to be discarded as they are fully complementary, said vice president of marketing, Mike Hudgell. IMM?s Cyrano product analyses problems in code generated by SQL tools such as Powerbuilder and Visual Basic. It then helps optimise the transactions and runs the client application against a server.

Performance?s product, V-Test, is mainly designed for load testing applications by simulating hundreds of users, so it takes over where Cyrano leaves off for a client/server test. The product suite works with Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase System 11 and, in an upcoming version due next month, with Oracle 7.0.

New offices are opening this year in Geneva and Singapore, in addition to existing bases in Slough, England, Germany, Paris and several US locations. There will be no loss of staff from the merger - in fact, Hudgell expects a significant increase in headcount.

The combination of the two product ranges makes Cyrano number two in the testing market, with turnover around $20 million, after Mercury Interactive, which is forecasting $35-40 million this year, 80 per cent in the US market.

V3 Latest