Taking the bull by the horns, JMI Equity Fund LP chairman and BMC Software Inc founder John Moores last month shook up two of his other majority investments, throwing together graphical user interface tool developer XVT Software Inc and network management and help desk outfit Peregrine Systems Inc in the hope that together, they’ll work some kind of magic. Specifically, the incumbent Peregrine management team has been swept aside and XVT president and chief executive Alan Hunt and chief financial officer David Farley installed to fulfill the same roles for both organisations. Although separate profit and loss centres, company identities, locations, product lines and channels will remain in place for the forseeable future (in other words, it’s still being decided), practical details of the re-organisation mean that Boulder, Colorado-based XVT becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of Carlsbad, California-based Peregrine. Moores is chairman of both. XVT says the merger means it gets its hands on Peregrine cash and that there will be an immediate synergy of the companies’ consulting and training operations. XVT, which killed its DBAware (nee PowerObjects) database application tool set just a month after its launch last spring following a poor reception, now says it may be ready to try again in that area. Meantime it’s working on a new release of its C++ development system. Peregrine will release a new version of its ServiceCenter help desk software applications suite this week. Version 1.3 includes new widgets and tools – some built with XVT technology – as well as network management products for managing Unix, Windows NT and NetWare networks. Peregrine is working on application programming interfaces to support Tivoli Management Environment, NetView for MVS, and Cabletron Systems Inc Spectrum, plus applications that interoperate with OpenView and NetView network management systems. For NetWare, Peregrine is developing ServerView, a remote server management package also due this month. Peregrine recently spun off its March 1995 Bridge Technology Inc acquisition – a Boston, Massachusetts-based developer of database replication and monitoring tools – saying that it didn’t want to be in the database tools business.
