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Both companies provided 4GL application development and productivity tools. Through ONCorp, Blacksmith was already forging a path to Oracle for MultiValue users. The MVON product is a MultiValue environment that runs on any database and also runs on any network, whether host-centric, thick client, three-tier, or application server.
BLACKSMITH is a fourth generation development tool and operating environment offering a graphical user interface
and database independence, meaning that an application developed in BLACKSMITH is compatible with Oracle and other relational products as well as the various MultiValue database management systems. BLACKSMITH also supports Macintosh, character and Windows formats.
Cuebic’s line of products includes a suite of application and productivity tools - 4GLs, security, batch processing,
report writing, documentation and operations tools. About five years ago, Cuebic began to shift its focus away from
the MultiValue industry and more on the Internet, building portal sites. "Around 1996, we surveyed the MultiValue marketplace and found that most customers had plans to be out of the MultiValue world and into the relational world,"
Spells said. "We determined there was a limited future in the PICK marketplace. With the Internet being the big wave, we went into the Internet field."
Then in 2000, the Internet bubble burst, hitting smaller companies especially hard, he said. "In 2000, we looked
at MultiValue and all the companies were still on it; however, they may have spent millions to re-engineer. So we
refocused our MultiValue efforts to help move them to mainstream standards."
This is where ONCorp, with its ONware product, fit in well with Cuebic’s game plan. From their vantage point in the MultiValue industry, Stauffer and Spells say they saw the
same trends shaping their market: MultiValue database users who wanted to migrate to Oracle or other relational
databases, but in the process, had a difficult time, to say the least. "We have large accounts, each with a few hundred
users on their systems, who wanted to migrate to Oracle," Spells said.
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"In the last five or six years, there have been some horrendous situations where companies tried to re-engineer or buy a software package to move to a relational database. They spent millions to re-engineer and haven’t been successful or achieved the same business functionality
of their MultiValue applications."
Stauffer concurs, adding, "A great number of companies in the MultiValue world are eager to replace existing software
with a relational database but retain MultiValue capability. Most are happy with the way their MultiValue
applications work. They just want to be part of the mainstream and not feel so isolated."
If Cuebic and ONCorp could be termed a marriage, then ONware is the "brain-child." ONware is the focal point of the new company, and is the key for companies who want to move to a relational database while maintaining all the functionality of MultiValue applications. It was ONware that sparked the merger, as Cuebic saw that the product would appeal to its customer base.
"ONware allows you to migrate from a MultiValue database to a relational database like Oracle," Spells said. "Through this merger, we are able to offer that to our market and the
MultiValue market in general. ONware allows you to migrate without having to rewrite the applications. MultiValue
applications are converted to ONware, and once converted, there’s no need to use a MultiValue or a post-relational
database. These programs can now actually reside on a relational database such as Oracle or DB2."
"All the screens still look the same," he added. "The organization can still develop in their MultiValue language or develop and enhance the MultiValue application with relational tools such as Microsoft, DB2, Java, and .NET."
With ONware, ONgroup is betting that its customers will like the fact that they really can have the best of both
worlds: MultiValue and relational.
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Recalling his experience with Cuebic’s large accounts that had disastrous and expensive results when trying to
migrate, Spells said, "Our solution costs a 20th of the investment they were looking at - without re-engineering or
buying a packaged solution."
Now that Cuebic and ONCorp are on the same mission, they are bringing everything - products and employees - together under the ONgroup banner. The merger doubles the company in revenue and personnel. "Cuebic, Blacksmith, and ONCorp will be shutting down operations, and the operating company will
now be known as ONgroup," Stauffer explained. "ONgroup accepts all obligations of the three companies and joins the
assets, including employees."
ONgroup is an equal partnership between Stauffer and Spells, and is privately held. According to Stauffer, Spells
is handling the business end of ONgroup including marketing, sales and administration, while Stauffer leads
the technical side of the business. ONgroup headquarters is in Atlanta, Ga., and other offices are located in
Ventura, Calif., the U.K., and Australia.
According to Spells, there is a high-level of awareness within Oracle of this migration trend. "One of the things we did when we were in the Internet world, was form strategic relationships with Oracle," he said. "We talked about the big MultiValue accounts that had made efforts to migrate and the millions of dollars that were being spent. Oracle became interested. They are devoting resources
and backing ONgroup as a Value-added Distributor to the MultiValue market-place. We resell the Oracle database and
tools bundled with ONware. The end result is, we’re providing a MultiValue-enabled version of Oracle."
With the dust settling after the merger, ONgroup is poised to bring ONware to the forefront of the effort to ease the migration from MultiValue to relational. And in doing that,
there’s a new team to watch in the MultiValue league.
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is the newest player
in the Multivalue league with the recent merger of ONCorp (sister company to Blacksmith Corp.) and Cuebic Inc. Once competitors, these two companies have joined forces as ONgroup, a company focusing on providing lower-stress, lower-cost migration from Multivalue environments to Oracle and other relational databases.