Primavera and Meridian Spar with the Dot-Coms

November 2, 2000

By Judy Schriener

Primavera's PrimeContract online collaboration and e-business solution has gone through more changes than a post-lockout basketball team-and it hasn't even been launched yet. However, PrimeContract's season is (finally) about to begin-on Nov. 20. Meanwhile, rival Meridian Project Systems is tackling integration of its Web service and software products with the major accounting software packages, and its first-round draft picks are J.D. Edwards and Timberline Software Corp. Watch out, dot-coms. The big boys are suiting up. Let the games begin.

Mixed sports metaphors aside, the old-line, traditional software makers are coming alive in the dot-com space. Yes, at first they were blindsided and maybe even blinded by the glare of the hype and publicity stunts of some Web vendors that wooed the financial rags with their vaporware business plans. Common sense would indicate that no intelligent person could take those outrageous plans seriously. Yet the dot-coms came away with millions of dollars in venture capital and kept getting the ink, while the traditional software makers-and the construction industry-stared dumbstruck.

The software makers clearly struggled with what to do. Using Primavera and Meridian as examples, at first they did the logical thing-ignored it all and hoped it would go away. No such luck. Both 17-year-old Primavera and seven-year-old Meridian struggled with how to keep their core businesses intact and healthy and still adapt to the dot-com environment that was coming, like it or not.

Each took a stab. Primavera announced a year ago that it would soon be launching PrimeContract. It hooked up with PurchasePro, which was to be its e-commerce engine, but that deal fell apart before anything was really done. The original plan (til the April tech stock plunge) was to spin off PrimeContract and do an IPO. Koppelman has now gone back to wanting to be called CEO of Primavera, not CEO of PrimeContract, as he requested to be identified a few months ago. PrimeContract again is part of Primavera. Welcome home.

Meridian, after months of no response at all, let e-Builder host its project management software on the Web, but Meridian did not really webify its Prolog application, meaning build it from scratch as a Web-based product or service. Then the company went into competition with its own Web-hosted version by developing other Internet applications, including what launched in June as ProjectTalk, Meridian's collaboration solution that integrates into its Prolog project management software, among other features.

Now Primavera and Meridian are getting serious. Primavera has some new equity partners, including i2 Technologies and Intel Capital (just announced Oct. 23), which together now own 21.7% of Primavera. Although i2, whose TradeMatrix e-commerce platform will power e-business functions on PrimeContract, and Intel will both help develop PrimeContract, Intel has not committed to standardizing on it.

Meridian, for the first time ever, sought and received venture capital funding this past summer. Meridian co-founders John Bodrozic and David Towert have always believed in building their business the old fashioned way and not using venture capital firms as automatic teller machines. So it was an out-of-the-box move for them to go that route, even for a relatively conservative $13 million. Welcome to the scary dot-com world.

So what will we see next from Primavera?

Koppleman photo by Judy Schriener

Primavera will be demonstrating PrimeContract and touting its strengths next week at the Computers for Construction conference and expo in Anaheim, CA. The real thing will go live on Nov. 20. Koppelman says the first two components of PrimeContract will focus on collaboration (gotta have that) and progress payments. He is proud of the fact that Java-based PrimeContract runs on top of Sun Solaris rather than Windows NT servers, which he says makes the whole service more stable and scalable. (Others disagree that NT isn't desirable for this type of service.)

Koppelman thinks the progress payment functionality is unique among online collaboration services. "It brings technology to bear on the problem and shortens the process," he says. He is trying to help the contractor-who does the work and then often can't get paid the right amount in a timely manner-and the owner-whose biggest problem often is getting enough good contractors to bid on his job. "This eliminates the paper shuffle," says Koppelman. People can view the same page on the Web with figures that are recalculated as they change, and the two parties can negotiate online. "It's like what we do in Expedition, but that's an offline thing. This uses a more sophisticated technology base," he says, and ties back in with Expedition, so people can enter their figures in Expedition and put it all on the Web or vice versa.

Primavera will roll out the third component of PrimeContract-schedule-based procurement-in first quarter of 2001. Time-based software applications are where Primavera has built its reputation, Koppelman says. He is not taking Primavera's P3 software and just making it Web-based, but is tying scheduling in to e-commerce. People will be able to track materials from the manufacturer to the job site, for example.

Koppelman is able to keep up on what dot-com and traditional competitors alike are doing, he says, by just checking his e-mail. "Most of them have these 'listservs' that tell everybody,'This is what we're doing,'" Also, when a competitor comes out with a new service or feature, Primavera's customers tell Koppelman, "Hey, we're using [one of the online collaboration tools] and we are not able to do this or that-can you do it?" He adds, "It's a big job to stay on top of this."

So what will we see next from Meridian?

Bodrozic photo by Judy Schriener

Meridian is ready to go next week at Computers for Construction with a cleaner and more simplified user interface for its ProjectTalk online collaboration service. (The show starts on Tuesday, but if you go to http://www.mps.com/ on Sunday….)

Another major focus for Meridian currently is integration of backend accounting software into its project management software, both as a software product and online. Meridian and Timberline just announced on Oct. 26 the launch of beta tests of Meridian's Prolog DataBridge for Timberline Gold, which was developed by Event 1 Inc., a Timberline third-party developer, along with certain Meridian customers. Full release is planned for December.

Last month, Meridian announced a similar integration with J.D. Edwards' OneWorld application, this DataBridge developed by AMX International. This integrated interface also is in beta testing and is scheduled for full release in the first quarter of 2001, says Bodrozic, who is CEO of Meridian. "We're creating credible, viable solutions to tackle minimizing the duplication of data entry. We think we're in the lead in this particular area," he says. "This is what the industry has been asking for for a number of years."

Also, Meridian plans to release PocketProlog for the Palm later this year. This was developed by Onsyss Inc., a mobile computer software developer. Customers at the Meridian International User Conference in Vancouver, B.C., in September got a sample demo of that and, like big kids with new toys, ran around beaming it to one another and showing off how well they could work it.

Meridian is coping with the dot-com onslaught by sticking to the way it has always done business. "It's not 'dot-com,' it's 'Internet' for us," says Bodrozic. "Those are very different things. Our business is about running a business responsibly with proven methods of revenue. We believe we're properly positioned for what the market needs."