isham research
As predicted here, UMX Technologies duly filed for bankruptcy in early 2004. Amsterdam-based lawyers Höcker Rueb Doeleman Advocaten were appointed as trustees to realise the assets. The assets of a software company, of course, include its source code - and this is normally escrowed as a condition set by investors and sometimes large customers.
The UMX Technologies VMF escrow was audited by Finace (sic) in August 2004. Most of the audit report is highly critical:
"The source that is kept at Escrow is not complete, it is a part of version 4 release 3 which was registered February, 2004 at Escrow. Escrow tried several times to get the missing sources of libraries but with no success, ..."
"There is no functional or detail design so it is difficult to make a relation between the sources and what the function is of the missing parts, ..."
"Because of the incompleteness and no documentation it is a risk to do a takeover."
"To make it complete [would] cost a lot of time and money, all the sources must be looked into and useful comment must be made, also a functional and low level design must be made."
Selected extracts from the audit report considered representative of the whole report.
Some of the VMF product, it seems, never even belonged to UMX Technologies at all. The graphical user interface (GUI) was developed by an American company and Inftec of Germany asserts rights over large parts of the system (including the parallel and ESCON channel drivers).
This was a highly unsatisfactory situation for any potential buyer, and despite the predictions of multi-million dollar revenues made by UMX Technologies the trustee in bankruptcy was forced to admit that "almost any six digit sum" would attract his serious interest.
On 12 April 2005, a press release was posted to the theoretically defunct UMX Technologies web site stating that Roundtrip Systems LLC of San Mateo, California, had bought the remaining assets of UMX Technologies. In spite of the reputation accompanying UMX Technologies' name, Roundtrip apparently intends using exactly this name for its new division. This, and the use of UMX Technologies' web site, awakens the thought that the old crew at UMX have merely found another sugar daddy and business continues as usual.
The currency for the "six digit sum" wasn't specified - it may have meant "over $100,000", but it might equally have been "over 100,000€" - around $120,000. Not a lot for such a supposedly valuable product. In fact, the hype continues - "Simply the best cost-effective mainframe on the market today" rings a little hollow for a system with no zArchitecture and limited z/VM support.
So far, nothing seems have changed except the name on the letterhead. Time will tell if Roundtrip Systems LLC - an otherwise highly reputable firm specialising in SABRE and similar consultancy to the travel industry - can stamp the mark of probity on the VMF product. One prerequisite will be a complete separation from UMX Technologies' former business management.