Amid the deluge of depressing corporate results in the IT sector, there is a mainstream technology company still posting double-digit growth and predicting even more positive business in 2003.
InterSystems, a company that has developed and markets Cach'e, its object-oriented database and development environment, has just completed its 24th year of operation internationally - and its first in SA - with solid results.
With the debris of the recession still in full evidence, privately held InterSystems grew its turnover by 15% and showed an increase in profits in 2002, reports Henry Adams, country manager for InterSystems South Africa.
"Apart from the financial side of our results, 2002 also saw InterSystems open four new offices on four continents and increase its workforce by 17.5%," says Adams.
And, not satisfied with maintaining its licensing revenue and squeezing out minimal growth, as some database companies did, InterSystems made inroads into its competitors` markets and increased its number of partners and customers globally by 12.5%.
All of this has led to Boston-headquartered InterSystems being named the world`s fastest growing database company, the leader in the embedded database market, and the largest independent database vendor.
Adams has only one answer as to why one technology company in particular should produce the goods in these tough times: the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Cach'e, InterSystems` database, is far lower than that of any of its competitors. The recession is forcing IT buyers to make discerning choices and to find solutions that will deliver for longer periods of time at less cost.
"Cach'e delivers where it matters," Adams states. "The performance of applications running on Cach'e, from single-PC applications to massively scalable enterprise implementations, is equal to or better than our competitors, but it is less expensive and requires less hardware."
Klas Enterprises, a research and consulting firm specialising in monitoring the performance of healthcare IT vendors, supports Adams`s statement. The company compared the performance of two healthcare applications based on InterSystems` Cach'e and two based on Oracle.
The results showed Cach'e rated better than Oracle in every satisfaction measurement, with the biggest Cach'e advantage in the area of reliability. In addition, the survey showed InterSystems required half the hardware of Oracle, and less than half the database administrators.
"The results are clear," concludes Adams, "and the market is beginning to realise that a big name and marketing budget do not necessarily translate to value - simply compare our results with our competitors to see who customers are turning to in these tough times."
Since entering the South African market a year ago, InterSystems has signed up 15 development partners and deployed thousands of Cach'e seats. The development cycle has only started, however, and the company expects the number of locally developed applications on Cach'e and seats deployed to increase dramatically over the next year.
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