Ross return greeted with scepticism

Renaissance CS, the accounting suite from US developer Ross Systems, is looking to live up to its name after undergoing a major overhaul to run under Windows NT, writes John Stokdyk.

The Softworld exhibition at London’s Earls Court on 19-20 February will give potential customers a chance to see the new Renaissance CS implementation, following a quiet year for Ross in the UK market.

‘Only five years ago, Ross Systems was one of the country’s leading suppliers of financial systems,’ according to IT consultant Dennis Keeling.

Renaissance CS software’s reputation was made running Vax systems from Digital Equipment Corporation, although versions for Unix and Digital Alpha systems made less impact. The company was not helped by a series of reorganisations instituted by its US parent, which culminated in redundancies at its European headquarters in High Wycombe last year.

The changes saw former UK managing director Chris Hodge taking over as vice-president for Europe, with UK sales director Nick Parkin moving up to managing director. With the new Windows NT version of Renaissance, the company is now making good its promise to upgrade the accounting suite.

‘We are seeing an explosion in demand for NT-based applications,’ said Parkin. ‘Many users, especially of Digital platforms, have not made the move from proprietary operating systems to Unix, but instead have waited for NT to become available.

‘We believe our move is in time to capitalise on the wave of demand.’

Renaissance CS UK product manager Jan Lubek admitted that the company’s profile had dropped in the UK, ‘but we made a conscious decision to move forwards with the technology at the cost of sacrificing some of our marketing.

We needed to get the technology right to ensure our long-term future.’

Apart from the new Windows NT version, Renaissance CS is still available for systems running Digital’s VMS and Open VMS operating software, as well as Unix. Renaissance CS includes an application development environment, Gembase, which, according to Lubek, makes it ‘operating-system independent’ and able to link up to different databases.

Currently, Renaissance will talk to underlying Oracle, RDB and Sybase relational database management systems, and work is progressing on a version for Microsoft’s SQL Server. Ross software developers are also working on enhancements to make it accessible to users via the World Wide Web, said Lubek.

‘Generally speaking, the approximately 400 users who have stuck with us are seeing the benefits of what has happened over the past two years.

We’ve taken hold of the technology out in the market and moved forward with it to deliver the things our customers want: open databases, client/server and Windows NT. Some of our competitors are still stuck on the IBM AS/400 and are struggling to move forward.’

However, not everyone is convinced that Ross will be able to regain its former eminence. Keeling commented: ‘I’m not saying Ross can’t bounce back, but in all my years as a business software analyst, I’ve never known a company that’s resurfaced. Once a company puts its users off, they are very sceptical and reluctant to trust the company again.’