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PRM -    BOSTON HERALD   (BHLD)                               STORY 2

Mark to buy piece of Prime Computer software
Byline:   MICHAEL E. KNELL
Day of week: WED
09/09/92
   A small Framingham company yesterday announced purchase of
a software piece left dangling by the shutdown of the former Prime
Computer.
   VMark Software will buy the software developed by Prime to
allow customers an easy move from the proprietary operating system
of Prime's hardware to the more common Unix system.
   Financial details were not released yesterday, but the
purchase will make potential VMark customers out of about 6,000
sites.
   "That should jump our growth up about 25 percent or so,"
said James Capeless, president of the eight-year-old company.
"We've hit some of those (companies), but that hasn't been our
target market."
   Many Prime customers were larger companies.
   Prime Computer's hardware division was shuttered this
summer as the Bedford company prepared to go public as a born-again
Computervision. However, the company will still service Prime
machines.
   One of the massive potholes in Prime's path was continued
reliance on proprietary machines at a time that the market was
moving to "open" systems compatible with those of many
manufacturers.
   VMark, which went public in May, last year had $12.4
million in sales. In the most recent fiscal quarter, the
105-employee firm had $4.4 million in revenues.

Growing Market Guides High-Tech Mapmaking
---
By Laura Impellizzeri
1040 Words
08/17/92
Copyright P & L Publications Inc. 1992
Cambridge, MA, US --
    As computer mapping has become increasingly popular in the past
two years through new developments in software, some Massachusetts
companies have found success consulting in mapping software and
applications.
    Harvard Design and Mapping in Cambridge has 20 employees and
specializes in developing geographic information systems (GIS) for
large public-sector customers. Applied Geographics in Boston, a
year-old start-up, creates maps that can be used in planning,
marketing and even litigation.
    Both firms use the software ARC/INFO, put out by ESRI of
Redlands, Calif. Analyst Bruce Jenkins, vice president of Daratech
in Cambridge, says ARC/INFO is a more precise, powerful and
expensive program with far more sophisticated analytical
capabilities than most competitors.
    In contrast, 2-year-old Atlas Data Systems in Sudbury, a
reseller for MapInfo software with five staff members, has sold its
turnkey GIS computer setups to about 50 customers in New England and
overseas. President and owner Ming Louie said his company
concentrates on service and other support for its systems.
    STRATEGIC PLANNING
    And while Applied Geographics and Harvard Design get at least 70
percent of their business from government agencies and utilities,
Louie said about half of Atlas's clients are businesses that use GIS
for marketing and strategic planning; they do not need the more
precise software when creating a map of potential customers in a
given area, for example.
    Jenkins said service-oriented GIS concerns, such as Atlas, are
more likely to grow in the future. Already, he said, service
providers hold 80 percent of the GIS market, which amounted to $5.7
billion in 1990, the latest year for which figures are available,
while software sales made up 6 percent and hardware 14 percent. Many
of the service providers simply convert data into forms usable by
GIS, Jenkins and others said.
    Echoing Jenkins's figures, Jack Shea, an analyst in the state's
management information system (MIS) division, estimated that 70
percent of the cost of implementing GIS involves the expense of data
conversion. Jenkins predicted an annual compounded growth rate of 22
percent for the GIS industry as a whole next year.
    Geographic information systems combine data (in tabular or
graphic form) and graphics so that a municipal user, for example,
could create different maps of all wells in town, properties
assessed below a given value, and streets that haven't been repaired
in at least 10 years, each with a few clicks of a mouse. The three
maps could be combined, with tables of still more data, just as
easily.
    One of the nation's bigger GIS software producers is
Computervision in Bedford, where sales of System 9 GIS software
amounted to about $8 million last year, according to spokesman Peter
Cohen. Revenue for hardware resales, general service and computer
systems integration was about $20 million last year, he said.
    Kathryn Hale, senior industry analyst with Dataquest in San
Jose, Calif., said most GIS development is in Colorado and Canada,
and numerous consulting firms nationwide are devoted to GIS
implementation and integration.
    Managers at Boston Edison, which recently installed ARC/INFO to
keep track of needed and performed repairs, can now determine with
the click of a mouse what kind of conduit exists at which manhole
and what is the quickest route from there to another site, given
specific conditions, according to an article by Boston Edison design
services division manager William Meehan published in the trade
magazine Geo Info Systems in April.
    GIS software--such as ARC/INFO, MapInfo from Troy, N.Y.-based
MapInfo, and UltiMap from Minneapolis-based Ultimap--enables users
to store up to six data layers on a given map, as opposed to the
single layer possible in CAD programs, said Joan Gardner, president
and owner of Applied Geographics.
    In Arlington, using what assistant director of planning Kevin
O'Brien calls "shoestring GIS," a system costing only $1,250 so far,
planning department staff analyze proposed zoning changes or suggest
new political precinct boundaries.
    With GIS, a new set of assessor's maps for the town will likely
cost about $100,000, about half what they might have. They will last
"forever," O'Brien said, because changes to the map can now be made
on computer and a new version of the map printed out immediately. An
arrangement to share data with Boston Edison, which would been
impossible before GIS, brought the cost down from $200,000.
    Typically, a town or city using UltiMap will spend about $50,000
to $60,000 for GIS hardware, software and two applications using
UltiMap software, said Rob Benoit, a salesman with Ultimap's Norwell
office .
    Maps that applied Geographics has created for clients include
one to demonstrate likely traffic jams on evacuation routes within a
10-mile radius of a nuclear power plant, another that shows the
impact of the noise and electromagnetic field generated by Conrail
trains as they travel the Northeast Corridor, and a third to show
water and pesticide runoff from farmland.
    "For policy making this is a good visual, because the farmers
can see it, the environmentalists can see it, and the state
representatives and senators can see it, so everybody's looking at
the same data and information," Gardner said.
    In 10 years on staff with the state's Hazardous Waste Facility
Site Selection Committee, Gardner herself led the development of GIS
capabilities. As the state's GIS slowly got off the ground, Gardner,
a librarian by training, quickly saw possibilities for the software
as a moneymaker. And in 1991, she started Applied Geographics,
bringing two colleagues from the state GIS office with her.
    Kija Kim, president and co-owner of Harvard Design, projects
revenue for her 4-year-old company at $1 million to 1.5 million this
year, and she said she expects the figure to triple in 1993. Between
1988 and this year, it has quadrupled, and Harvard Design opened an
office in Japan, she said.
    Kim said her company specializes in bigger projects, such as
helping the Massachusetts Water Resources Administration adopt an
GIS in-house. (The MWRA has also been a client of Gardner's.)
Harvard Design also helps cities and towns assess their GIS needs
and implement whatever is appropriate, and it simply produces maps
for other clients.
    Louie of Atlas Data Systems said he first looked toward the
business community as a market for GIS when government cutbacks set
in. Louie reported a 1992 growth rate of about 20 percent for his
company.

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