Discusión De Resultados

1992 was the tenth year of the CD and one in which the CD-ROM industry was characterised by an increasing number of mergers, buy-outs and reorganisations, the majority aimed at future product development and market growth. During the course of this research project, the online industry, document delivery companies, computer companies and professional associations were also subjected to volatile changes many of which involved developments which impacted upon information practitioners' software, products, services or equipment. In their study of 1993, Broadview Associates detailed 895 merger and acquisition deals in Europe in the IT area in 1993 alone - and the information services sector accounted for nearly half of all those deals (Broadview Associates, 1994).

The months before the commencement of this research project were indicative of the types of on-going activities. In February 1992, Dataware Technologies (CD- ROM software provider with distribution partners in 12 European countries) and Reference Technology (RTI) (strong service bureau expertise, originally involved in the establishment of the High Sierra file format standard) merged, the resulting new company becoming the largest independent supplier of software and services to the CD-ROM and multimedia pubhshing industry. During Spring 1992 Dataware also made a joint marketing agreement with Optimage Interactive Services (thus bringing multimedia, in the form of CD-I - Compact Disc Interactive, to its customers) and acquired the distribution arm of Archetype

Systems (renamed Dataware Technologies (UK) Ltd), thus strengthening its international position and its position in the British market in particular. The company Macromedia was formed in 1992 as the result of a merger between MacroMind-Paracomp (industry leader in scripting and animation) and Authorware (the pre-eminent corporate/educational authoring tool company) which in turn followed the merger of M acroMind and Paracomp in the autumn of 1991 and M acroM ind’s purchase of Farallon Computer’s sound product line. The appointment in May 1992 of Nathaniel Goldhaber as Chief Executive Officer of the company Kaleida, a joint venture company formed in the autumn of 1991 by Apple (a company strong on end-user interface) and IBM (a company strong on basic technology), brought renewed speculation about Kaleida’s future. The company’s stated aim was to create and establish a standard multimedia platform to compete with those from Microsoft, Philips (CD-I), Sony, Nintendo, Sega and Commodore. However, the uncertainty of multimedia development, still in its embryonic form at that time, was reflected by the fact that both Apple and IBM continued their own in-house R&D on multimedia platforms and products.

During the course of this research project (October 1992 to September 1995) the acquisitions and mergers taking place in the marketplace of interest to information professionals gathered apace.

In January 1993, the United Kingdom Association for Information and Image Management (UKABM) amalgamated with Cimtech Ltd, Europe’s leading consultancy and research centre for document and image management. In M arch 1993, Knight-Ridder Inc, the US newspaper and information services company announced the acquisition of RadioSuisse AG, whose principal business was Data- Star, Europe’s leading online information service. Knight-Ridder already owned Dialog Information Services, the US-based online information services company and the combined services resulted in a comprehensive range of business and scientific databases. In the Spring of 1993, OCLC acquired Information Dimensions Inc (IDI) from Battelle Memorial Institute. Since then IDI, located in Dublin, Ohio, has operated as a for-profit subsidiary of OCLC, a non-profit organization which is also located in Dublin, Ohio. The Chairman of the IDI Board of Directors, stated “IDI provides an exciting strategic fit with OCLC in full-text electronic publishing, electronic archiving and information m anagem ent... areas of growing importance for both organisations”. Spring 1993 saw the

takeover of lOD Inc, which provided document delivery services under the name of Information on Demand, by Article Express International Inc, a document delivery company jointly owned by Dialog and Engineering Information (Ei). The Chairman of Article Express stated that the acquisition would provide its customers with expanded document delivery services in a variety of formats and that the name Information on Demand would be retained. In M ay 1993 SilverPlatter Information and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts formed a strategic alliance in which SilverPlatter assumed Cambridge Scientific Abstracts’ CD-ROM publishing activities, popularly known as Compact Cambridge.

With the breakup of the InfoPro Technologies (formerly known as Maxwell Online) in 1994, BRS Online was bought by CD Plus, the Orbit Search service by Questel (a French Telecom subsidiary), and BRS Software Products (the core product being BRS/Search text retrieval system) by Dataware Technologies. Dataware, a CD-ROM and services company, hence broadened its software and services offerings to include information management and online delivery. In 1994 also, an agreement between BIDS and the UnCover Company (part of the BH Blackwell group) gave the UK’s higher education community access to over 5 million articles worldwide. In addition, 1994 was the year in which the WordPerfect Corporation was sold to Novell, Aldus was purchased by Adobe Systems, and Quattro Pro (Borland) was acquired by Novell.

In 1995, Learned Information (Europe) Limited announced the acquisition of Mecklermedia Corporation’s UK trade shows. Included in the purchase were Computers in Libraries International, Electronic Books International and Internet World International. In 1995 also, Swets subscription service concluded an agreement with SilverPlatter to provide customers with remote Internet access to SilverPlatter databases located on a Swets network server, on a subscription basis. ERL retrieval clients, WinSPIRS, PC-SPIRS and M acSPIRS were to be used to search both the remote Internet and local databases. Internet subscriptions are modelled on CD-ROM subscriptions and are priced in the same manner as corresponding CD-ROM titles in a network environment. 1995 was also the year CD Plus announced plans to adopt Ovid Technologies Inc as the official company name, following the acquisition the previous Spring of the BRS Online and Colleague services; IBM announced its ambitious move into company software by means of the acquisition of Lotus Development; Knight-Ridder Information

acquired total interest in the UnCover Company, a joint partnership of CARL Corporation and Blackwell Ltd.; Dialog acquired a 100% interest in document supplier Article Express International (AEI) with plans to amalgamate AEI with Dialog SourceOne document delivery service; and UMI acquired the San Francisco based document delivery company, The Information Store, integrating it with its existing Article Clearinghouse to offer a premier document delivery service to organisations around the world.

Finally, Dialog announced changes in pricing which included some options that were more like CD-ROM pricing (connect time was cut by 30 per cent with the intention of eliminating it, a new “view fee” was introduced for every Type, Print or Display command, and two fixed price options, which used to be offered only to large clients, were made available to everyone); and Verity Inc and Netscape Communications Corporation announced a partnership that brought Verity’s Topic software technology to the Internet by embedding Topic in its Netscape servers and reselling Verity’s Agent Server technology. Topic, already used in many well- known software products including Adobe Acrobat and Lotus Notes, will bring agents and topic query objects to the Internet. Topic agents allow users and online providers to filter incoming information against interest profiles and send automatic alerts via personal HTML pages, electronic mail or fax. Topic objects also allow information to be categorized and browsed by subject.

In addition, during the course of this research project, many Internet service providers went public and others merged or grew by acquisition.

Traditionally, success and importance in the business arena have been associated with corporate size, numbers of employees, gross turnover and number of years in business. “In the past, companies succeeded, became big and important, and stayed big and important for decade after decade” (Information M arket Observatory (IMG), 1994, 5, 6). Examples in the twentieth century information business include IBM, Sony, and AT&T. However, with the newer technology areas, the latter decades of the twentieth century have witnessed the quick rise to success and fame of smaller companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Lotus, Novell and Intel.

“ ... increasingly, many new technology and information areas could well be dominated by a kaleidoscopic and ever-changing array of smaller

companies, rather than continue to be dominated by a few giants. When life speeds up, giants have problems (as IBM, for one, has discovered)” .

In short, the report concluded that the electronic information area would continue to be dominated by new small companies who, if successful, would be acquired by larger ones.

As we move into the twenty-first century, this fast-moving acquisitions and mergers issue is yet another area for information professionals to keep themselves appraised.