Just for the sake of fairness.
I was not entirely happy about this, but there you go!

M

RNS Number:7286H
Tadpole Technology PLC
19 February 2003

Tadpole Technology plc ( "Company")

Issue of Equity - Additional Listing


The Company today announced the issue of 10,193,680 New Ordinary Shares at a
price of 4.905p to GEM Global Yield Fund Limited, pursuant to the equity line of
credit provided to the Company by GEM Global Yield Fund Limited and GEM Advisors
Inc., details of which were contained in a circular to shareholders dated 31
January 2002.

This current draw down takes the total of Ordinary Shares issued by the Company
to GEM Global Yield Fund Limited pursuant to the Subscription Agreement, as
varied by the Supplemental Agreements, to 14.34 per cent of the issued share
capital of the Company as at 18 February 2003 (the latest practicable date prior
to the issue of this announcement) and as such necessitates the production of
Listing Particulars. The Company has today therefore issued an Issue Note which,
together with the Shelf Document published on the UK Listing Authority's website
on 4 April 2002, will constitute Listing Particulars.

Application has been made to the UK Listing Authority for the 10,193,680 New
Ordinary Shares to be admitted to the Official List of the UK Listing Authority,
and to the London Stock Exchange for these shares to be admitted to trading.
These shares will rank pari passu with the existing ordinary shares of the
Company and dealings are expected to commence on 24 February 2003.

The draw down is consistent with Tadpole's stated strategy, as indicated in the
preliminary announcement, that it will use the GEM facility to support business
progress in its software companies.

Terms and definitions included in this announcement have the same meaning as in
the Issue Note dated 19 February 2003. Copies of the Shelf Document and the
Issue Note are available free of charge at the registered office of the Company
at Trinity House, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WZ and at the offices of Denton
Wilde Sapte at One Fleet Place, London EC4M 7WS during normal business hours on
any weekday (Saturday, Sundays and public holidays excepted) following the date
of this announcement. In addition to this the Shelf Document is available on the
UK Listing Authority website at http://www.fsa.gov.uk/ukla.

19 February 2003

ML.. at least its out the way now and I expect the news flow to restart.
Gem is there to be used as and whenstill the question of why only 500k?.all will be revealed no doubt.
Tris

maybe all they need, Maybe enough to get them to a news release that will hike the price up hence less dilution when called on later, time will tell my little 1

Posted by nk156 on 3i's


From a Gartner Paper on ODADS (Sept 2002)

[Square brackets are my comments]

[The Gartner report is generic on the subject of ODADS and makes reference to a couple of our competitors (only because the report was written back in September. No doubt this will change after our recent seminar). However it does give a very positive insight into the potential of this technology.]


[Gartner some good early user experience]
...For example, a large financial services company uses an ODADS platform to allow its customers to access their primary trading application. Without ODADS, users had to download the entire Java applet (almost 2MB) every time they needed to use the application. This approach was impractical for remote use, and unusable during peak trading hours when simultaneous access saturated network bandwidth. More than 3,000 investors currently use the trading application with the ODADS, streaming bits of runtime code to local cache over 50K dial-up without any performance issues. Prior to using the ODADS, the application download took three to five minutes or longer during non-peak hours. The installation and deployment was quick and relatively painless, as the pilot took only four weeks. Another example is a service company with a large reservations system that has a Java-based front-end application (with a feature-rich graphical user interface; the applet is more than 3 MB). The company expects the number of users to grow to more than 100,000 during the next two years. The application is updated frequently. Deployment of the ODADS has resulted in positive user satisfaction and reduction of help desk calls, and has freed up network bandwidth for other applications. The agents are satisfied because they can work from home over slow networks with the same rich user interface to which they are accustomed. IS organization management is satisfied because no changes to the software were needed, and new features and enhancements are streamed to users automatically the next time they connect to the network...
[100,000 users now that would be nice]


..Softricity and Microsoft announced a three-year joint marketing agreement in May 2002. There are no licensing or financial terms. This agreement is purely a marketing agreement to promote .NET solutions. It is not a product development agreement and does not involve Microsoft product groups...
[ETI and Microsoft agreement is different. MS is paying ETI to move to .NET framework. Microsoft is also helping in product development access to MS labs and technicians]

...- Vendor viability: AppStream and Softricity are small startups with no guarantee of survival beyond the next 12 to 18 months. Enterprises will not invest in ODADS technology for large production rollouts until they feel the vendors are viable and can support them on a 24x7, quick-response-time basis...
[Could it be that we have a major potential clients that require 24x7 support hence the GEM drawdown to expand this area?]

...- ODADS platforms must have proven scalability to support enterprises with 30,000 to 50,000 desktops...
[AppExpress scales to 100,000 users]

...Through 2007, provided that they are acquired by or actively promoted and supported by some major vendors, more than 40 percent of enterprises will use ODADSs for targeted applications (0.6 probability)...
[ETI is being actively promoted and supported by MS and HP]

Tadpole's new web page is here.

http://www.tadpole.com/html/

M

YOL = Yawning out loud.

F

Fugitive
How long did it take to work that one out?
Have you been working on it all day?
Well worth the wait.
Guru

Oz link!

Must be revenue producing, that we didnt know about.

http://www.geis.com.au/browsers/ie/

M

IM Needs to Build a Community
February 25, 2003
By Colin C. Haley



BOSTON -- Despite their enormous clout, the Big 3 of instant messaging service providers (Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo!) can't make the technology a success among enterprise customers on their own.

Systems integrators, software developers and consultants, need to help convince corporate decision makers that the technology is compelling and workable.

"Currently, there is no ecosystem to take existing enterprise infrastructure and integrate it with IM infrastructure," Microsoft executive David Gurle said in his keynote address here at Instant Messaging Planet Conference and Expo this morning.

Another key is investment. Unlike some technology giants, Microsoft does not have a dedicated investment fund, prefering to get involved with companies later in their development, Gurle said. For example, Microsoft recently pumped $51 million into peer-to-peer player Groove Networks.

The Redmond, Wash., firm does, however, regularly consult with venture capitalists to express what applications they would like to see used in conjuction with its new enterprise IM product, Greenwich, due out later this year.

"Startups have agility that a company the size of Microsoft or IBM doesn't have," said Gurle, whose group is readying Microsoft's Enterprise IM offering, Greenwich, for later this year. AOL and Yahoo are working on their own enterprise products.

Jeff Crown, former head of Lycos' venture arm, and currently managing parter of Aqueduct Partners, said the IM space is similar to the Internet in 1995.

"It's still wide open, it's still the wild wild West," said Crown, now managing partner at Aqueduct Partners, a Wellesley, Mass., consulting firm serving small and medium businesses.

So far, the flow of capital hasn't come anywhere near the amount pumped into the Internet space in its early days. This is due partially because some funds have eschewed technology investments after being burned by the Internet bubble as well as a more anemic economy in general.

Crown thinks investors would also like to see some harder numbers about the market potential and ROI of enterprise IM.

To be sure, there are other impediments to the ubiquitous adoption of IM in the enterprise, including a business model that will allow users of the Big 3 to communicate with each other. Gurle, a former executive with a French telecom, said the fear is customer churn, a problem experience by European wireless carriers where interoperability reigns.

A consistent name space, enhanced security protections and standards for authenticating users, are other problems that have been repeatedly voiced at the show.

An encouraging sign, Gurle believes, is that large customers, like pharmaceutical companies to financial services firms, are starting to ask some hard questions about the practical integration of IM.

If these growing pains are overcome, then IM's potential is enormous. The Big 3 know it will go faster and smoother if they don't have to go it alone.

Unite and Federate!
February 26, 2003
By Christopher Saunders


If it isn't already clear by now, there's little standing in the way of a technical impediment to interoperability (despite what some major players in the space have indicated.) Instead, it's all a matter of hammering out a serviceable business model for cross-network consumer IM.

Of course, this isn't necessarily an easy pill to swallow. Microsoft's David Gurle pointed out quite rightly that his coworkers over in the MSN group, as well as their rivals at AOL and Yahoo!, fear the user churn that will result if interoperability is established among the consumer networks.

Still, it's not a problem if the common service -- that is, presence -- is wide enough to accommodate a variety of add-on applications. Instead, it then becomes an issue of which provider has the best presence-leveraging applications.

That's going to be essential, since presence -- as speaker after speaker attested -- is the most important feature to emerge from instant messaging: for one thing, as Gurle noted, IM-based presence will finally realize the decades-old dream of "intelligent" telephone networks. And, of course, a whole lot more.

Fortunately, we're reasonably close to achieving interconnecting networks in the enterprise market.

"Interoperability is not as dire as it seems," said Lotus' Jeremy Dies during a panel discussion. "IBM and Microsoft own 90 percent of the enterprise application market and both are building platforms on SIP/SIMPLE."

What then? Here we touch on "federation" -- the show's third-most common concept, and the glue tying enterprise IM interoperability to those meaty, presence-based applications.

Of course, that's "federated" as in federated authorization and authentication, which seems a necessity once (if?) interoperability is achieved among business-class IM networks. After all, as IMLogic's Francis deSouza said, it's not hard to consider the myriad problems with which a business has to contend should one of their employees be using the public IM handle "Biceps2Big" to interact with clients.

Indeed, Gurle contended that interoperability "will impact the shift of power in the IM market" by giving the authority for administering their users' identities to businesses. As a result, IT managers and compliance officers will dictate how employees represent and conduct themselves online, while at the same time, can safely assume that their clients and colleagues on other networks are who they claim to be.

This shift may make the opening up of consumer IM easier to swallow, as the major networks are or will soon roll out enterprise-class products to handle namespaces and federated authentication. That's one way Boom said Yahoo! has already been preparing for interoperability.

Gurle said a third-party would have to serve as a "clearinghouse" for networks' presence information, enabling businesses to connect and share information from their presence-based communications networks with each other. (He declined to discuss Microsoft's plans during his talk, but it should go without saying that Microsoft's .NET Service is a likely contender for the role.)

In any case, federated authentication also carries a number of crucial auxiliary benefits. For one thing, Gurle noted that unlike in the current e-mail space, instant messaging "cannot have spam by definition ... with an end-to-end authorization and authentication model." In other words, you still can get unwanted messages -- but only from identifiable, blockable senders and domains; or not at all, if you block messages from users not on your contacts list.

But most importantly, the establishment of local nodes where users are authenticated sets the foundation for enterprises' more comprehensive use of presence -- in VoIP, videoconferencing, collaborative software development, and so on.

"IM created a connection infrastructure -- IM connects people, and it's hard to stop there ... to not escalate that scenario to other communication modes," Gurle said. "If we get all this right, the sky is our limit. A whole new telecom network -- that's going to be the nirvana. There are going to be opportunities for companies to make money off of it."

Which means that we can't rule out the public network giants' commitment to interoperability. After all, income from selling advanced presence-based services -- nesting on top of the authentication services they also plan to sell -- would be a considerable improvement for the IM networks over the current state of free public messaging.

This fact, of course, isn't lost on them. During the show, Boom hinted that Yahoo! is quite aware of the potential to be had in presence-enabled services for businesses.

"We have a big presence network," he said. "The development of presence and how that's used by the enterprise is going to be one of the key focuses for us."

08:39 Thursday 27th February 2003
Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com


Microsoft has unveiled additions to Windows XP and a software development kit designed to help desktop users allow individual desktop PC users share information directly, instead of going through a centralized server to disseminate data
Microsoft is introducing additions to Windows XP designed to make the operating system better tuned for peer-to-peer applications.

The software giant on Wednesday unveiled a beta, or testing version, of the Windows XP Peer-to-Peer Software Development Kit. The programming tools are designed to let software providers or corporate developers more easily build peer-to-peer applications on top of Windows XP.

Peer-to-peer applications, popularized by file-swapping services such as Napster and Kazaa, allow individual desktop PC users to share information directly, instead of going through a centralized server to disseminate data.

Microsoft also plans to build peer-to-peer application programming interfaces (APIs) into Windows XP. For example, with the planned APIs, Windows XP will allow devices on a peer network to find and interact with each other automatically.

Microsoft, in the development kit, has also improved the underlying data transportation protocol, Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6, in Windows XP. The enhancements to the IPv6 software will help programmers create peer-to-peer applications across company firewalls or for mobile devices, according to Microsoft.

A final release of the software development kit and the update to Windows XP will be available later this year, according to Microsoft.

With Microsoft's strength in desktop software, it has an interest in promoting the creation of peer-to-peer applications that rely on powerful PCs, and on its Windows operating system. Last year, Microsoft purchased XDegrees, a peer-to-peer start-up, and indicated plans to use XDegrees technology in its storage products.

"The core of Microsoft's growth is based on distributed computing, what's becoming known as horizontal scaling, where lots of machines cooperate together to complete work," said John Rymer, an analyst at Giga Information Group. "Anything they can do to ease that cooperation is goodness."

Sun Microsystems is also pursuing a peer-to-peer development initiative to build up the underlying "plumbing" required for distributed applications. It's doing this through an open-source project called Jxta.

Peer-to-peer application developer Groove Networks, which received a $51m investment from Microsoft in 2001, said the low-level additions to Windows XP have the potential to make it easier for developers to build decentralized applications.

Consulting company Cap Gemini Ernst & Young also intends to exploit the forthcoming peer-to-peer features in Windows XP.

"In the past, the discussion has been about how computers can do a better job of talking to other computers. Yet the future of business is about how people interact widely with many people around shared information, knowledge and content," Andy Mulholland, chief technology officer at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, said in a statement.

At last year's AGM, BH stated that XDegrees were TAD's biggest competitor in the p2p arena. I wasn't aware that MS had bought them. Looks like another nail in TADs coffin to me.

I wonder if there is anything here for Tads ?

ains




Text/SMS messaging totally insecure

Canary sings, "I can read your texts"

By Tony Dennis: Friday 28 February 2003, 10:41


A LITTLE BIRD working for one of the major British GSM operators has revealed to us just how insecure the whole text/SMS messaging service really is.
In order to offer SMS (Short Message Service) - otherwise known as texting - operators install an SMSC (Short Message Service Centre). Many of these SMSCs come from software specialists such as LogicaCMG or Schlumberger SEMA.

In essence, an SMSC is like a giant store-and-forward email server.

Our canary maintains that the typical time a text message stays stored on the SMSC is around 15 days. Worryingly our bird says that text messages can actually be viewed by ANY customer services advisor. " There's no password or permissions or anything," the canary adds.

"Many advisors amuse themselves on slow days by picking numbers at random and reading the messages, and then following the trail to the sender and jumping from person to person like this. It's also possible to spoof text messages through the [SMSC], and make them look like they've come from anywhere or anyone, just like with email."

More to the point if a member of the public does want to take some sort of action regarding a nuisance SMS, the operator does genuinely possess the ability to interrogate the SMSC and discover all the requisite information.

Most operators won't actually admit this to the public, as it could easily generate masses of customer complaints which would be unprofitable to pursue. The good news, however, is that if you ask the customer services department of your mobile phone company very nicely indeed, they will reveal the number for a nuisance calls bureau which can investigate SMS complaints too. So now you know.

Sun rises on corporate IM
12:47 Thursday 27th February 2003
Evan Hansen, CNET News.com


Sun's plans for a new IM server product increases the attention on instant-messaging for corporate customers
Sun Microsystems plans to release a standalone instant messaging server product within the next few months, the company confirmed this week, in the latest sign of booming demand for corporate IM services.

Sun has long offered IM with its Sun ONE (One Network Environment) Portal Server suite, formerly marketed under the iPlanet brand.

A new standalone Sun ONE Instant Messaging server product is expected to arrive sometime this spring, a company representative said on Tuesday, although a formal release date has not yet been announced.

The new IM server will add support for Linux -- currently Sun ONE Portal Server runs on Sun's Solaris OS and Windows.

The new standalone server product comes as demand for enterprise IM is heating up amid a growing recognition of unauthorised IM usage in the workplace. "There's a battle under way for the hearts and minds of business IT managers for IM in the workplace," said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research.

IBM's Lotus Sametime product dominates the official business IM market, according to analysts. But it has been illicit office use of consumer IM services such as AOL's ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) that has recently thrust the technology into the spotlight for corporate information technology managers.

Companies, including top Wall Street brokerages, have banned popular consumer IM products in the workplace and have begun testing services from IM providers that offer security and other features, such as message archiving. These features are designed to bring the technology into compliance with regulations governing brokerage customer communications.

That could create a big opportunity for companies such as Sun to steal the march from the three giants of the consumer IM marketplace: AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Sun's decision to break out a standalone corporate IM server dovetails with plans initiated last summer to open its portal product for use with rival operating systems, and to compete on a product-by-product basis in addition to positioning the products as part of an integrated suite.

Patrick Dorsey, group manager for Sun ONE communications products, said the standalone IM server will continue to offer a high level of integration with the portal platform, although he said it could help open doors to customers seeking to add IM to an existing system built on products from Sun rivals such as BEA Systems and IBM. He said Sun has about 1,000 customers of its collaboration platform, which include IM, calendaring, e-mail, scheduling and task management. He added that customers looking to use IM have increased significantly over the past six months.

"The trend in the market is for customers to look for well-integrated products that can also leverage third-party products," he said. "To the extent that customers need a targeted solution, we'll serve that."

Jupiter's Gartenberg said Sun could still have its work cut out for it competing for business IM customers with the three consumer IM giants. Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have all announced plans in the past six months to develop corporate IM products, adding features sought by businesses such as security, archiving and authentication.

"This represents the fact that IM is a growing business application that enterprises want to employ throughout their businesses," he said. "But it will be a challenge for Sun to convince business customers that they understand the IM market as well as players that have established themselves in the consumer market."

Sun and AOL began interoperability tests between their IM products in late 2001, although no compatible products have yet been announced. Sun and AOL Time Warner's Netscape division had previously partnered to create Web applications for businesses under the iPlanet umbrella. Sun took sole control of the project at the end of the initial three-year partnership deal, renaming the products using the Sun ONE brand.

Sun's IM server plans were disclosed at the Instant Messaging Planet conference in Boston this week, and first reported in Computer Reseller News.

http://www.directionsmag.com/pressreleases.php?press_id=6590

Mar 03, 2003

Endeavors Technology Teams With SunGard At Information Availability Conference For Britain's Financial Services Institutions

Worldwide organization serving 20,000 financial services institutions invites Endeavors Technology to showcase its secure network messaging, collaboration and on-demand application delivery products at the SunGard Information Availability Conference - Connections 2003 (March 25-26, 2003, London)

fyi


Tuesday 4 March 2003

HP creates Web services management unit



HP has formed a web services management team that will oversee its work with both J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) applications and Microsoft's .net-based software.
HP's chairman and chief executive officer Carly Fiorina made the announcement in a keynote speech at the BEA eWorld conference in Orlando.

One of the major goals for the new group will be making sure HP's OpenView management software works well with J2EE and .net software from various suppliers.

"HP is committed to working with BEA, other partners and many of you to make Web services a reality," Fiorina said during her speech.

"It is not something we are doing because it's the next big thing. It's something we are doing because it will help our customers achieve more cost-efficient IT, more responsive IT and more integrated IT."

HP wants to make it possible for both J2EE-based applications and .net-based applications to work together, Fiorina added. The company shelved much of its own Internet infrastructure software or middleware last year, deciding that partnerships with BEA and Microsoft would be a better option.

HP has also created a services practice dedicated to J2EE-based software, Fiorina said, which will have 1,000 staff by the end of the year.

Software Development Meets Presence and Collaboration
March 4, 2003
By Christopher Saunders


With a growing number of players working to embed instant messaging and availability-detection into enterprise applications, the concept of presence continues to make headway into business applications. Ironically, however, little has been done to spread the trend to the software development industry. Instead, collaboration in the development space generally consists of tools to organize project workflow.

That could change as a result of efforts by firms like Internet Access Methods. Late last year, the company unveiled a new version of its IAM-Developing collaborative environment, which enables C++/Java programmers to work together. In connection with its presence and authentication servers (which glean user permissions from corporate LDAP directories), the system provides a real-time link to others that's a step beyond most of the collaboration tools now being targeted to developers.

"E-mail isn't ... concurrent collaboration, the kind you do on the telephone," said Internet Access Methods President and Chief Technology Officer Gerry Seidman. "Say I'm working on my code and I don't know why it doesn't work. Say Christine used to work on this project, but she's three floors down, or maybe at home, or maybe working from India. I'd like to work with her ... but [not using Symantec's] PCAnywhere, [Netopia's] Timbuktu, [or] screen-sharing ... Our take on this is very different."

Not your father's SourceForge

It's a pretty radical departure from the collaboration tools commonplace in the space, since developers can use the product to collaborate in ways beyond simply viewing a colleague's submitted code, or seeing what's on another person's screen using a tool like WebEx or PCAnywhere. IAM-Developing uses peer-to-peer technology to link development environments on different users' PCs -- allowing one user to view, edit and compile code on another's machine, even behind firewalls.

After locating an online colleague and initiating a connection, users can watch as the other scrolls and edits -- in real-time. Participants in the collaboration session hand over control of the code for the other to edit, ensuring that only one developer has "write" privileges. Coworkers can even decouple their systems, so that editing can continue in one section of the code while a second user views another area. In that case, the interface keeps pace, showing each participant where the other is working in a file.

Because the code under construction never leaves the collaboration session originator's machine, it also solves issues that might arise in different development environments, and surrounding intellectual property protection.

"Imagine that I'm a programmer at a financial services firm," Seidman said. "I have a question and am looking at some code. But I don't want to e-mail a consultant source files: it might not be the code, it might be the [operating] environment [that is the problem] -- or I might not be allowed to show others code."

Additionally, the system can support opening other files on the host user's machine/network -- so that with the proper permission, two coworkers could be working on two different files in full view of each other. The system also supports running a number of Unix apps from the command-line, such as emacs and vi.

"The power of this is in terms of remote team development, in system administration, and in support," Seidman said. "We have these frameworks of technology for building collaborative applications."

Future directions

While the collaboration capabilities open new doors for working with peers on a project, Seidman also envisions licensing the core technology behind IAM-Developing as a platform for outsourced services and tech support contracts -- where initiating a collaborative session can link a user to not just a fellow employee, but to a paid consultant or support personnel.

In this scenario, a developer using IAM-Developing can click a button to be connected to outside support, with request routing, tracking and billing handled invisibly by Internet Access Method's presence servers.

Development software is "a terrible market, but this can turn it into a portal for selling professional services," Seidman said. "There's no upsell on a 5-day Java course that I run. But now I can sell [students] a service contract. How do you sell professional services from software -- like a deeply collaborative [Intuit] TurboTax, where you can go over your returns with an accountant? Businesses can use real-time collaboration to find new revenue options."

A word-processing variant of the core software borrows the same functions. While it's available separately, or as part of the company's proprietary instant messaging and presence client, Seidman imagines eventually packaging the word processor application as an add-on for Microsoft (Quote, Company Info) Word or Sun Microsystems' (Quote, Company Info) StarOffice.

Combined with an add-on module supporting screen-sharing of PowerPoint slides and other applications, the technology gains still more applications.

"There, the idea of remote classes now becomes more pragmatic," Seidman said.

Already, the technology behind IAM-Developing is being tested at a number of educational instructions, in several consultancies, an auto manufacturer, and in the military.

With such a wide range of target markets for the technology, however, Internet Access Methods is likely to run up against larger, more established players in the field of collaboration platform vendors -- which itself is growing in scope. For instance, Groove Networks last month began efforts to syndicate its presence and collaboration tools into other applications through APIs.

And earlier in the year, Microsoft snapped up Web conferencing player PlaceWare, in addition to having a number of hotly anticipated collaborative offerings in the pipeline for this year, such as a new version of SharePoint Team Services.

Yet Seidman waves away the competitive threat to the firm's platform.

"Microsoft doesn't scare me outside of areas where they have a monopoly ... [because] the model of collaboration we have is very different than screen-sharing -- Excel doesn't know anything about collaboration. It has to be designed in the application, and cannot be layered on. And the PlaceWares, the WebExes, the Grooves, and the PCAnywheres are all based on 'how can I take legacy apps and make them collaborative' -- versus, 'how do I make collaborative applications?' Collaboration is about working together -- not co-presentation."

Still, a number of smaller players on the horizon are also treading on the area that Seidman hopes to carve out for Internet Access Methods. InfoBuild Networks, for instance, is coming to market with its own solution for coupling collaboration to development applications.

It's quite a different approach -- the Point Roberts, Wash.-based firm's Bsmarter product delivers IM, desktop and file sharing, along with a call-center-like queue. But already, the technique has found converts like units of Reuters, which use Bsmarter to create a collaborative environment for HTML-based in-house education projects. In one recent project, Reuters employees could click on a button to be queued up with questions for instructors, who can see users' desktops and respond to their queries via IM.

The promise of JXTA

In addition to broadening the platform's applications, Internet Access Methods is also hoping to boost its chances with a consolidation -- that is, onto JXTA (define) as its peer-to-peer foundation. The firm is a big supporter of the open, Sun-backed P2P protocol -- Seidman is president of the New York JXTA special interest group -- and includes support for it in the latest version of IAM-Developing alongside IAM's proprietary protocol.

The next update to the product, due out within weeks, will abandon Internet Access Method's proprietary protocol entirely. The move to pure JXTA support, Seidman said, cuts down on development costs and could also prove a selling point for clients.

"It's very expensive for us to write proprietary technology, and we don't want to maintain it anymore," he said. "It's also a very hard sell to walk into a corporation and say 'I run this proprietary technology behind the corporate firewall and oh, it pierces your firewall' ... that's one way to make a bad introduction."

Support for JXTA is growing in its own right, with followers attracted to the protocol because of its thinness and its support for multiple platforms, devices and transport protocols -- including non-IP-based protocols like Bluetooth. Sun said today that users have downloaded a million files from its open-source Project JXTA site to date.

But like IAM-Developing, JXTA itself faces a threat from Microsoft, which is busily promoting its .NET technology as the basis for P2P applications. Later this year, the Redmond, Wash. software giant is expected to ship its Greenwich server, which provides low-level support for advanced collaboration functions.

Christopher Saunders is managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.com.

www.evbg.com
Tadpole Technology
6.5p (12m range: 32.75p to 5p) Final results 6 March 2003
TAD
12.5m
11.3m
217.7m
97%
-
1.2m
4.2p
-
FTA Rel
1m
3m
12m
2.1%
-24.3%
EVBG is broker to Tadpole Technologies
Tadpole concentrates on software
Hardware division sold post year-end in December
Results for the year ending September 2002 saw revenues decline in the
hardware business, whilst steady progress was being made in software
sales. Post year-end, in culmination of its long-term strategy, Tadpole
has sold the hardware business for 1m in cash and 5.3m in promissory
notes.
Hardware revenues fell 35% but margins strengthened
The hardware business continued to suffer from the current lack of
corporate IT investment, seeing its turnover decline by 35% to 14.8m.
However due to strengthening gross margins, its pre-amortisation, preexceptional,
losses were held at 0.5m p.a.
Software revenues grew 24% but it is still loss-making
The software businesses produced only 1.8m in revenues, but this was
a 24% rise on last year. Following administration costs and ongoing
R&D expenses it did produce a loss of 6.1m, but this was an
improvement on last years 6.6m loss. The combined 6.6m FY02 loss
led to a loss per share of 3.6p before goodwill amortisation and
impairment O/S contract.
Draw-down funds 3.9m cash outflow from operations
Cash outflow from operations was 3.9m, with a further 0.5m spent on
the purchase of Omnishift IPR. This was part-funded by the issue of
2.5m of equity under a draw-down agreement, to leave closing net cash
of 1.2m.
A seminal year for the Company as its software goes to market
We see this year as a seminal one for the Company, and in particular
Endeavors since Cartesia is already off the mark. Tadpole has worked
hard to develop the software products into a marketable portfolio, and is
now redeploying resources into selling them through channels and
partnerships. The challenge is now to demonstrate the true commercial
potential foreseen by the management. We are looking for a steady
ramping up of sales contracts over the FY03 as yet more utilities take
advantage of its GIS solutions, and perhaps more importantly for the
longer term, the IT industrys excitement over peer-to-peer architecture
coalesces into a defined marketplace for the product.
Year end Sales EBITDA Pre-Tax Tax EPS DPS PER EV / Sales EV / EBITDA % Change
m m m % p p X % % EBITDA EPS
09/01A 24.6 -7.5 -7.0 - -3.9 - - 0.5 - - -
09/02 A 16.7 -6.2 -7.3 - -3.6 - - 0.7 - - -
09/03 E 4.9 -2.3 -2.5 - -1.2 - - 2.3 - - -
09/04 E 7.4 0.5 0.7 - 0.3 - 21.7 1.5 22.6 - -
2
Thursday 6 March 2003
With the post year-end disposal of the hardware business, investors are now
invested in two early stage software businesses: Cartesia and Endeavors.
Cartesia
Cartesia offers field-user IT solutions primarily aimed at the requirements of
water and gas utilities. Its Conic portfolio includes a range of mobile mapping
solutions and it has developed several value-added solutions to the widely
used ESRI -Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.- geographical
Information systems (GIS) technology. The business has strong representation
in the UK and the US, and is beginning to explore opportunities in Ireland. The
ESRI product pipeline has become the key growth driver of the business and
management envisage Cartesia sales of near 20m within 5 years,
predominantly driven by the ESRI relationship.
After three years, the business has made steady progress and the solution is
currently being used by: Three Valleys, United Utilities, Norweb, Scottish
Power, Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water, Bristol Water, Alliant
Energy (Wisconsin), Consumers Energy (Michigan), Niagara Mohawk (New
York State), TXU Electric & Gas (Texas), GPU (New Jersey) United Networks
(New Zealand). Although the average size of these deals is obviously relatively
small, this client base is blue chip, widespread, and growing steadily. Other
vertical markets targeted for future sales include the public sector, and
transportation.
In order to sign these contracts, Cartesia has established several channels to
market. Major partnerships include ESRI; ESRI developers Miner & Miner;
TelDig Systems a major utilities systems vendor; Leica Geosystems a leading
surveying systems developer; and Hemann Technologies Inc., a Korean VAR.
Cartesia achieved revenues of 1.8m last year, and these are expected to grow
substantially in FY03, supported by a significant contract backlog. In
particular, there are the two large projects: for the Ordnance Survey and
Consumers Energy. The Ordnance Survey contract is for the implementation
of the ESRI-based GIS system by the end of 2003 and the majority of the
revenue should be recognised in the last quarter of FY03. Thereafter support
and maintenance fees will be ongoing. The Consumers Energy field
deployment deal was signed in January 2002 and should be fully rolled out in
FY03. We must then look forward to where future revenues will be derived.
With the lengthening sales cycle in corporate IT spending, we are looking for
Cartesia to win further new contracts over the next half to secure the revenue
stream into FY04.
As a pure software business gross margins are very strong. With much of the
R&D work completed, overheads have been kept steady and should remain
fairly flat at 2.4m p.a. We believe Cartesia will approximately break-even
during H1, but should achieve a profitable run-rate by H2 of this year, and we
expect it to produce a profitable contribution to cover much of the additional
1m of Group overheads in the full year to September 2003.
Endeavors
To date Endeavors has been an R&D-led business. Based on developments in
peer-to-peer architecture, Endeavors has developed Magi, a web services
desktop, which provides users with a secure and integrated infrastructure for
messaging, file sharing and for collaborative applications. A demonstrable
3
Thursday 6 March 2003
model of Magi was available in 2001, and in 2002 the Magi 3.0 range of
products was launched with initial customers being Mitsubishi Motors
Dealership, Autodesk, and the Ordnance Survey. NTT are also experimenting
with the software as part of proposed 3G mobile offerings. Now that the
products have been developed, Endeavors has turned its efforts towards
selling them. At present, the Company has only a small sales force. The VP of
Sales, Michael Sullivan, has 3 salesmen at the Irvine HQ, 3 outsourced
salesmen (1 in California) and 2 technical salesmen (again 1 in California). The
sales channels already lined up to get Magi to market include HP, Microsoft,
and Autodesk, with more to be announced this year.
A possible concern is that Magi is enterprise software for use across all of a
business network and in the current market climate, fewer corporates are
investing in new enterprise-wide solutions. To avoid the current difficulties in
selling systems architecture, Magi is being marketed very clearly as a solution
to material business problems, in particular; offering secure instant messaging,
streaming applications, and secure peer-to-peer collaboration solutions.
However we are at a very early stage in the life of this technology and it has
yet to gain widespread understanding and adoption. We feel that the true
litmus test of the value and commercial potential of this software will now
occur with Endeavors switch from development to marketing.
We do anticipate a small number of sales in H1, however it will surely take
some time for the sales team to build up sufficient momentum in what is a
relatively new product space, and the real sales run-rate will probably not be
visible until the end of FY03 and beyond. In the meantime we expect it to be
incurring overheads of approximately 3m p.a. and it is important that sales be
built up to cover this cost as soon as possible.
Financing
Although the Company begins this FY03 with net cash of under 1.2m, it will
receive approximately 1m from the sale of the hardware business. On top of
this there is the GEM Global Yield Fund equity draw-down facility. Up to
10m is available until January 2004. In FY02 the Company drew on 2.9m. In
November it drew 0.6m and in February the Company announced it had
drawn another 0.5m, leaving 6m still available. We are forecasting that the
Company will lose 3.1m in cash terms from its operations this year, FY03, and
that it should then breakeven in the following year. This should allow the
Company plenty of leeway in its working capital requirements and we do not
see financing as a hindrance to the potential success of the business.
Unfortunately increasing use of this facility will dilute current investors but if
it allows the Company to survive long enough to see the benefit of its R&D
investment, we feel that it will be a relatively cheap price to pay.
Valuation
At present Cartesia is carrying the valuation of the group, whilst Endeavors is
just expectation. At 12m market cap this is a multiple of 12x this years
expected Cartesia profits, ahead of Group and Endeavors expenses. By the end
of FY04, if both Cartesia and Endeavors perform to plan, the Company should
be making a profit overall, albeit a slight one. At the present market value our
forecast EPS of 0.3p leaves the stock on a forward multiple of 22 times
earnings. We feel this adequately reflects a good possibility of out-performance
from the Magi software. We feel the true value of this product will only
become visible as further sales are announced through the course of H1.
This document is issued by Evolution Beeson Gregory Ltd (Evolution Beeson Gregory) (incorporated in England, No. 2316630) which is regulated in the United Kingdom by The
Financial Services Authority for designated investment business and is a member of the London Stock Exchange and of NASDAQ Europe. This document is for distribution in or from the
United Kingdom only to persons who are authorised persons or exempted persons within the meaning of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 of the United Kingdom.This
document is for information purposes only and should not be regarded as an offer or solicitation to buy the securities or other instruments mentioned in it. Expressions of opinion are those
of the research department of Evolution Beeson Gregory only and are subject to change without notice. No representation or warranty, either express or implied, is made nor responsibility
of any kind is accepted by any Evolution Group company, its directors or employees either as to the accuracy or completeness of any information stated in this document. Evolution Beeson
Gregory or persons connected with it may provide or may have provided corporate services to the issuers of securities mentioned in this material. Accordingly information may be known to
Evolution Beeson Gregory or persons connected with it which is not reflected in this material. Evolution Beeson Gregory may make a market or deal as principal or agent in the securities
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necessarily a guide to future performance.
Thursday 6 March 2003
Company description
With the post year-end disposal of the core hardware business, Tadpole is left
with two early-stage software businesses: Cartesia and Endeavors. Cartesia
develops and sells the Conic range of mobile mapping solutions targeted at
companies with large field workforces. Endeavors is the software division
developing the Magi cross-enterprise infrastructure to securely network
clients applications and files.
Market position
Cartesia operates in the niche geographic information systems (GIS) market
with few competitors. ESRI is the worlds leading developer of GIS and in 2001
Cartesia started developing solutions to add value for the ESRI client base.
Peer-to-peer systems architecture, such as developed by Endeavors, could
have almost universal application but is very new in a commercial sense and is
yet to see widespread adoption. Some very large technology companies, such
as IBM, SAP and Microsoft have put considerable resources into the area, to
date without notable return.
(Year to Sep m) 2002A 2003E 2004E
Profit and loss
Turnover 16.7 4.9 7.4
Gross Profit 6.3 3.8 6.8
EBITDA -6.2 -2.3 0.5
Operating Profit -6.6 -2.5 0.3
Exchange loss -0.7 -0.3 0.0
Net Interest 0.0 0.3 0.4
EVBG Pre-Tax Profit -7.3 -2.5 0.7
Exceptional - - -
Pre-Tax Profit -7.3 -2.5 0.6
Tax Charge(%) - - -
Gross Margin (%) 37.7 77.4 92.1
Operating Margin (%) - - 4.1
EVBG EPS-pre goodwill (p) -3.6 -1.2 0.3
CFPS (p) -2.0 -1.4 -0.2
DPS (p) - - -
Operating profit -6.6 -2.5 0.3
Depreciation 0.5 0.2 0.2
Working Capital 2.0 -0.8 -0.9
Interest 0.0 0.0 0.0
Taxation 0.2 0.0 0.0
EVBG Cash Flow -3.9 -3.1 -0.4
Net Capex -0.5 -0.1 -0.1
Net Acquisitions/Disposals - 1.0 -
Share Issue 2.5 2.5 -
Cash Generated -1.9 0.3 -0.5
Closing net cash 1.2 1.5 1.0
Operational ratios
Cartesia revenues 1.8 4.6 5.1
Endeavors revenues 0.0 0.3 2.3
Software Revenues
Cash Flow
(Year at Sep m) 2001 2002
Balance sheet
Intangible fixed assets 10.7 6.8
Tangible fixed assets 0.6 0.5
Other fixed assets 0.1 0.2
Debtors 3.4 2.4
Stock 2.6 1.7
Cash 4.3 1.2
Creditors 4.7 3.6
Other liabilities - -
Capital employed 17.0 9.2
Net Cash 4.3 1.2
Shareholders funds 17.0 9.2
Shareholders
Company Share Price Graph
1.8
4.6 5.1
2.3
0.3
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
2002A 2003E 2004E
Cartesia Revenues Endeavors Revenues
-5
-4
-3
-2
-1
0
2002A 2003E 2004E
TADPOLE TECHNOLOGY
FROM 4/3/02 TO 4/3/03 DAILY
MAR APR MAY JUN J UL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35

From http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/03/14/11ctp2p_1.html

Roy Wilsker has a wish that undoubtedly resonates with other enterprise IT leaders. "We are trying to have people work together as partners," says the Tyco Healthcare director of technology planning. "We tried e-mail, video conferencing, and building rudimentary Web sites to share applications. But it became clear that people needed a good, clear, sophisticated way of working with each other in a network."

Wilsker looked into p-to-p technology offerings that promised to provide just that. After taking a leap of faith nine months ago, he now says that p-to-p has delivered.

Although once regarded as a limited and illegal file-sharing application, thanks to the hype about Napster, p-to-p is now gaining ground among enterprise chief technologists who see opportunities to simplify their network infrastructure and take advantage of improved workflow. A key factor leading to the technology's increasing enterprise traction is the move by vendors to integrate p-to-p's networking capabilities with XML and Web services.

In recent weeks, Groove Networks, NextPage, and Endeavors Technology all released upgrades to their p-to-p-based offerings, giving corporate customers a chance to extend the uses of the technology into more sophisticated applications. Groove offered its Workspace Version 2.5, which deepens integration with Microsoft Outlook and improves Web services interfaces for file sharing. NextPage released Folio 4.4, upgrading its Folio software for Windows XP with enhancements to the user interface, making content access and retrieval more efficient. Endeavors added enhanced document management capabilities to its p-to-p software.

"The name of the game here is integration. Many companies as well as vendors are recognizing that having scattered office documents and databases and applications repositories has been a long-term problem," says Dana Gardner, research director of enterprise Internet infrastructure at the Boston-based Aberdeen Group. "The next big productivity boost is going to be in being able to have a much more common approach to data applications, documents, and Web content."

As p-to-p gets integrated with enterprise applications such as Web services and XML toolsets, it presents a viable path toward increased workflow productivity, Gardner says. "P-to-P allows people to get an early advantage in connectivity and integrating process content and applications."

Creating places to work

Tyco Healthcare, a Mansfield, Mass.-based medical parts company and a division of Tyco International, had $7.8 billion in sales in 2002. Tyco's Wilsker is working to bring together the 20,000 computer users at the sprawling company. Initially he deployed Groove for IT-oriented projects, such as managing the migration from Windows 98 to Windows XP, and for data-process management tasks.

"[IT] likes to feel the pain first so we can understand how the technology works," he says. And the pain hasn't been too bad. The technology planning director plans to expand deployment to other company units, including research and development, in the coming months. "We expect to use Groove worldwide," Wilsker says.

In practical terms, the p-to-p architecture offers Wilsker many advantages, including lower per-use deployment cost and a sharply reduced user learning curve, compared, for example, to setting up a mixed environment of shared applications, video conferencing, and e-mail. "Groove allowed us to create a collaborative infrastructure that enables users to quickly and efficiently create places to work," he says.

Groove Web Services APIs (application program interfaces), says Wilsker, will extend data to more and more users and applications. Features such as files, discussions, documents, calendars, and online presence can be tied into Groove Workspace. Plus, the integration of XML and Web services offered in Groove's Version 2.5 will enable easier collaboration by making an increasing number of Microsoft applications available in a collaborative setting, he says.

Aberdeen 's Gardner says that p-to-p's success may, in fact, ride on how well offerings incorporate Microsoft tools. "The linchpin here is how well you play off of [Microsoft] Office. The best bet for p-to-p value advantage is to play off of Office documents and XML," he says.

Wilsker will use Groove with Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server software and Outlook e-mail to better manage information sharing within the company. "The tools in version 2.5 allow you to take documents created in Groove and publish them to SharePoint and make it available through out the company."

But Groove's collaboration offering isn't for everyone, Wilsker says. The architecture works best with small- to medium-sized groups using up to approximately 150 Mb of data, Wilsker says. "Groove is not something you want to use with thousands of people. We use it with groups of from five to fifty people."

Managing content through p-to-p

Organizations are also finding that p-to-p benefits accrue in the thorny realm of content management. They're using p-to-p to reduce the heavy lifting involved in managing content networks, supporting automated content-delivery networks that aggregate disparate documents for a variety of uses.

A two-year-old federal government project is creating a portal to give access to diverse documents and data through p-to-p networking between divergent federal agencies -- and it's getting positive reviews from a variety of managers. More than 70 agencies are participating in the development of the portal called FedStats.net.

Brand Niemann is an IT executive at the Environmental Protection Agency and a member of the FedStats Interagency Task Force. A central issue in the development of the network, Niemann says, is to provide a way to format the many different types of documents that would be accessed and displayed through the portal.

"People were really concerned with sharing diverse content, whether it was proprietary file formats, PDF files, relational databases, or Web files," Niemann says. To answer these concerns, FedStats uses software from Lehi, Utah-based NextPage. When users request information from the portal, the software searches for the information at partner agency computers and uses XML to make style sheets available for browser viewing.

The system has eliminated the need to buy individual servers for each agency and staff to manage them, Niemann says. "I'm a firm believer in [FedStats]. It enhances collaboration and reduces costs by eliminating middle infrastructure and middle employees where appropriate. It's elegant and makes deployment simple by using XML Web services standards like SOAP to establish virtual messaging across the Internet."

Niemann says there is a greater level of governmental involvement in p-to-p technology than is publicly known, "The military is an extensive user of p-to-p. You just don't know about it. Remember, p-to-p has been there as a philosophy of the Internet. It was initially developed by DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] with the idea that if you had all out war, and one node was knocked out, it [the network] would still survive."

Having proved its value for content delivery and management, p-to-p is also finding a home in the private sector. Deloitte & Touche U.K. uses NextPage's p-to-p content delivery network to provide its roughly 2,000 auditors with external accounting and auditing information without having to wade through a jumble of repositories, says Peter Danson, senior manager of client services technology at Deloitte & Touche U.K.

"It saves us from having to do a massive amount of content management," Danson says. "Otherwise we would have to download data files onto our server, route them to our environment, test them, and have them take up disk space."

Likewise, Mitsubishi Motors North America, based in Cypress, Calif. , has deployed Endeavors Technology's Magi software to provide instant access to inventory information from dealerships across the United States , says Jason Rathbun, MMNA's critical backorder administrator.

"We placed the software on the dealer's computer in the parts department, where it turns itself on every morning, collects parts inventory reports, transmits it to a server with another piece of p-to-p software, which [then] collects it, scrubs it into the style we need information formatted, and sends it to our mainframe," says Rathbun. "It's all automated."

Although p-to-p offerings are maturing, they may be a step ahead of the technology's general acceptance. But as p-to-p is integrated into enterprise networks, the cultural roadblocks slowing its adoption will also disappear. EPA's Niemann says, "There are cultural drawbacks [because of p-to-p's] association with Napster. And the client-server model is difficult to overcome. But these issues are being dealt with as p-to-p changes the way people interact."

dollarhoger has it at 6p and more from his charts soon, and then a rise, I see us at 20p by mid April.