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Start-up emerges from Ebeon's ashes
Wednesday, March 27 2002
by John Kennedy


A young software firm established last year by the former employees of Ebeon has
unveiled its first product, aimed at reducing IT project failure rates.





SteelTrace is headed by former Ebeon marketing manager Tara O'Sullivan as CEO and
CTO Fergal McGovern, also formerly of Ebeon. The rest of the staff includes
former employees of Ebeon as well as Iona Technologies.



The company's first product Catalyze Solo 1.0 is currently installed in 25
companies, and ElectricNews.Net has learned that USD8 billion IT giant Invensys
is currently beta-testing the product for use in reducing IT project failure
rates. 



SteelTrace said its products can help reduce IT project failure rates, which
according to the Standish Group are exceptionally high. The group's report said
that nearly three quarters of IT projects fail, come in over budget or late. The
report also said 28 percent of software projects fail altogether at a cost of
USD75 billion globally.



When Ebeon shut down in January 2001, a group of employees who were working on
developing an IT solution aimed at reducing project failure rates decided to try
to save the product by establishing a new business. 



Led by McGovern, the company got in touch with UK IT firm Netdecisions, which
swiftly acquired a 100 percent interest for EUR1.4 million. SteelTrace got off
the ground in February 2001, and according to O'Sullivan the initial funding is
envisaged to take the company to a break-even stage planned for Q3 next year.



O'Sullivan explained that the company acquired all outstanding intellectual
property rights to the technology from Ebeon's liquidators last September.



Catalyze 1.0 is the culmination of three years of research and development by
McGovern's team at Ebeon and in the new venture. The company has implemented a
solid beta customer programme since October 2001, including 30 users, and
SteelTrace said the product has been well received by analysts in the technical
sector.



"The technology enables companies to see what exactly they want the system they
are investing in to do," O'Sullivan said. "They can spec out what the product
features are going to be and how it will complement their organisation.
Ultimately, it is aimed at business analysts and project managers to ring fence
the system as much as possible to ward off the possibility of failure. You can
use the software to drill down to any technical level you want to."



Describing the background to the establishment of SteelTrace, O'Sullivan
explained: "Charles Mindenhall, the CEO of Netdecisions and now chairman of the
board of SteelTrace, was introduced to the product development team last year. He
had a meeting with Fergal and did the product demo and was so impressed that he
had them in offices a week and half later. Ebeon went bust on 18th January last
year and SteelTrace was up and running by the 1st of February. At present over
1,000 people in Netdecisions are using the Catalyze product."



O'Sullivan added that the company is currently focused on the Irish and UK
markets and is planning to embark on its US strategy later this year once it has
hired a country manager. She explained that SteelTrace will leverage
Netdecisions' 13 offices worldwide to expand its global reach. 



O'Sullivan added that India is also a strong potential market for the company in
terms of the product ensuring greater efficiency and success rates in distributed
software development. 



The Catalyze software product is understood to cost around EUR1,250 per seat.