Maxwell Online has changed its name to InfoPro Technologies Inc to escape the negative implications of the Maxwell tag and to reduce emphasis on its on-line business. The market for the company’s Search text management and retrieval software product, based on IBM Corp’s Stairs, is growing at a rate of 25% per annum, compared with that of on-line services at 7% a year. While Search currently makes up one third of InfoPro’s business, it is expected to hit the 50% mark within three years. Search was developed by the BRS Software Products division of InfoPro. Used predominantly in the legal, government, security and publishing sectors, it can search up to 16 databases simultaneously. Text, images, graphics, audio and video can be stored and retrieved on-line. In addition, software tools are provided so that users can develop their own databases. The McLean, Virginia-based company, part of the Macmillan arm of Maxwell Communications Corp, restructured recently to take in two other divisions: Orbit Online and BRS Online. The Orbit Online product is based on SDC’s biblio-graphical retrieval software, which was originally developed for the defence industry, but was developed by InfoPro in-house. It is targeted at patent and intellectual property research professionals and provides access to over 100 databases. BRS Online, like Search, also grew out of IBM’s Stairs. It offers access to about 150 databases, covering biomedical and pharmacological articles and abstracts. BRS Online is targeted at research professionals in the medical community and academic libraries. After paying an initial subscription of about $40, users pay on a time-charged basis, depending on which databases they are accessing. Although released in the US six years ago, BRS Online was only made available in Europe last year. However, it now has been supplemented by BRS Colleague. Colleague is a menu-driven rather than a command-driven system that enables customer’s to set their own user level. It is aimed at such non-technical and infrequent users as general practioners, health professionals and researchers in pharmaceutical companies. Subscriptions of UKP230, UKP500, UKP750 and UKP1,000 are paid according to how many databases the customer wants to access. All online services are linked to a central database in Chicago and InfoPro has 60,000 online database users worldwide. InfoPro’s products are completely open and run on any hardware environment from personal computers to mainframes. Main competitors are IDI, Verity Inc and Fulcrum Technologies Inc, and InfoPro’s intention is to achieve growth by developing new business within its niche vertical markets.
