Oakton, which released its financial results for 2003 today, revealed it had decided to close its products division -- which was focused on developing a successor to e@gle.i -- as it had underperformed, dragging down the group's result.
The product divisions' revenues dropped 86 percent for the 2003 financial year, leading to an AU$4.5 million fall in net profit from AU$1.5 million to a AU$3 million loss. Oakton managing director, Paul Holyoake, said the company had simply sunk too much investment into marketing and developing Monet.
Holyoake said that products like Monet were facing a tough market. He said with law enforcement agencies facing tighter budgets and tougher due diligence, it had become more difficult to get e@gle.i's successor "across the line".
Oakton had managed to sell a 1200-seat license to use e@gle.i to a South African law enforcement agency, but it was yet to sell the redeveloped version of the software to anyone before offloading its product division to Canberra-based intelligence software specialist The Distillery.
Oakton claims investors had widely welcomed the decision to sell-off product development and focus on its services business, which offset the company's losses with a 29 percent increase in net profit after tax.
The Distillery -- a privately-owned intelligence software specialist -- agreed to purchase AU$5.5 million in services from Oakton in exchange for intellectual property rights to develop Monet and its Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) development platform, JCORE.
A spokesperson for The Distillery said the company made the acqusition because it was good technology and it didn't want to leave a gap for another competitor in the crime and security management software space.
It's also hoping to pick up Oakton's former business with the NSW Police.
"Eventually, I assume, the NSW Police will want their system upgraded," said the spokesperson, adding later "we just hope to pick-up where Oakton left off in terms of continuing to be the developer of for those systems for the NSW Police".
Oakton describes e@gle.i as an Internet-enabled investigation management system developed in close co-operation with NSW Police.
In July 2000 Oakton managing director, Paul Holyoake, was celebrating the chance to continue to developing the software with an extension of the company's contract with the NSW Police.
