The joint venture between Java software house Sanga International Corp and CSX Technology Inc, the technology unit of the transportation giant, has been postponed indefinitely. The venture was to have redeveloped one of CSX’s supply chain management products using Sanga’s Java component set and redeploy it across other vertical industries. The reason for the cancellation was a novel one: CSX says it is in the process of closing its major acquisition of Conrail, the east coast rail system and it is focused on that and making its internal systems Y2K-compliant. When asked if CSX will go back to Sanga when all this is complete, it says we’ll have to see. The Conrail acquisition has been in the works for more than two years and received regulatory approval last month from the Surface Transportation Board, says the company. But there’s a large technical component in the whole merger process that the company apparently does not want to be diverted from. The venture was announced in late March (03/25/98), a week after the two companies signed an agreement for Sanga to extend its TWS Net Premium supply chain management application across the other verticals and made that into a joint venture a week later. Sanga was believed to have the majority of the venture by a narrow margin. It seems that CSX still has time to develop its supply chain management software, through its business units, including Customized Transportation Inc unit, CSX Integrated Services and the Buyers group. But not, it seems through Sanga, although it insists it still has a good working relationship with Sanga, that doesn’t expect to change. Privately held and Ottawa-based Sanga is one of the original Java development shops, coming out with its first suite of applications, Sanga Pages, in the fall of 1996. It then split the technology up into components and used them to develop vertical industry applications. The company did not have anything to say for itself as all its executives were apparently traveling – but not by train, we presume.
