Delrina
Encyclopedia
Delrina was a Canadian software
company founded by four individuals, Dennis Bennie as CEO and chairman, Mark Skapinker as president, Bert Amato as executive vice president and chief technical officer and Lou Ryan as executive vice president of world wide sales. The company was established during 1988 in Toronto, Ontario and was subsequently acquired by the American software firm Symantec
in 1995. These four founders started the Delrina venture together and ended the venture still together six years later. Delrina was Bennie's second major entrepreneurial start up after co-founding Mission Electronics, still today a leading international home theatre equipment company. Delrina's business strategy was to "establish technical and market leadership in niche markets", which it accomplished with its electronic form and PC-based fax software. Delrina's electronic form products included PerForm
and FormFlow
, but it was best known for its WinFax
software package. WinFax enabled computers equipped with fax
-modem
s to transmit faxes to standalone fax machines or other similarly equipped computers. Delrina also produced a set of popular screensaver
s, including one that resulted in a well-publicized lawsuit for copyright and trademark infringement (Berkeley Systems Inc.
v. Delrina). The case set a precedent
in American law whereby satiric
commercial software products are not subject to the same First Amendment
exemptions as parodic
cartoons or literature.
The firm grew steadily over the course of the early 1990s, with revenues from WinFax amounting to 80% of the company's revenues. It attempted to diversify into other areas such with online communications software with its WinComm
product and produced a Web browser called Cyberjack
. The firm was sold to Symantec
in 1995. After the company was acquired by Symantec, various divisions were sold off and several of Delrina's former executives went on to found venture capital
firms.
an expatriate Bert Amato
, South African expatriates Mark Skapinker
and Dennis Bennie
and American Lou Ryan. A year before the firm was incorporated, Amato and Skapinker had quit their jobs to start work on an electronic forms product which would eventually become PerForm
. Both would later meet with Bennie, who was then the Chief Executive Officer
of Carolian Systems International, a firm that made business software for Hewlett-Packard
. Bennie facilitated an initial seed investment of $1.5 million CAD to finance a new start-up company, "Delrina", to develop this idea. In return, Carolian received 51% of Delrina's shares.
Delrina's initial corporate headquarters was located in a small office on Mount Pleasant St in Toronto. A sales office was set up in San Jose, California
which became its worldwide sales center run by co-founder Lou Ryan. From its Toronto headquarters, the company expanded by establishing branch offices in Kirkland, Washington
; Washington, DC; and Lexington, Massachusetts
. Other offices were later established in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
. Amato and Skapinker came up with the idea for the product while working as consultants that what their clients wanted was a way to fill in forms electronically, rather than an easier way to create paper-based forms from a computer. There was significant and long-term uptake of electronic forms products within governmental agencies both in Canada and the United States, the latter spurred on in particular by the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act
to reduce the total amount of paperwork handled by the United States government. One of the firm's early major software deals included a multi-year agreement to sell PerForm to the U.S. Navy in 1990. Soon after the software was installed on Compaq
laptops that accompanied U.S. troops during the First Gulf War, where it was used to requisition "everything from Coca-Cola
to privies
". Other significant volume sales went to 3M
and Rockwell International
. What helped set apart Delrina's electronic forms from its competitors in product reviews included its easy-to-use interface, its extensive development tools, and its comparatively low price. It also scored highly when it came to workflow and routing functions as well as security features. In early 1991 InfoWorld
selected PerForm Pro
as its "Product of the Year" in the electronic forms
category, and PC World Magazine gave the product it's "Best Buy" designation. PerForm proved to be successful in its niche, effectively capturing the retail market by 1993.
In the early 1990s Delrina made deals with value-added resellers like NCR
and GE Information Services
who had the staff to customize the product to the needs of corporate customers looking to move away from paper-based forms. The forms products sold well and the annual revenues for the firm grew steadily; 1989 annual revenues (in Canadian dollars) were $5,630,393, in 1990 they were $8,759,623, and by 1991 they were $11,894,474.
Needing an infusion of funds, in April 1991 Bennie managed to raise $7.7 million in a private placement
.
The firm subsequently sought to find ways to more widely distribute its electronic form software, with Bennie saying in May 1992 that "we've barely scratched the surface of our market".
In early 1992 word leaked to the press on a possible merger between WordStar International Inc.
, and soon after both firms made public the fact that they had signed a letter of intent on a merger deal. However, just over a month later word came out that the merger talks had fallen through, at the time cited to differences over "complex legal, accounting and management issues". WordStar, whose share of the word processing
market had by that time fallen to 5% (from a high of 80%) was seeking Delrina's advanced technologies while Delrina was hoping to utilize the other firm's established global sales network. Despite the failure of the merger talks, Bennie said soon after that "we're still convinced that a larger sales force would give us the kind of marketing clout we need. I still believe that it's possible for us to become a global operation". Not long after WordStar merged with Spinnaker Software Corporation
and SoftKey Software Products Inc. to form SoftKey International
. Delrina subsequently signed deals with Wallace Computer Services, UARCO and NCR Corporation
in an effort to gain greater sales distribution of its products.
product. Software developer Tony Davis (another South African expatriate who had moved to Canada) was initially hired as a consultant to work on the forms line of products in the late 1980s, soon afterwards becoming part of that team. In his spare time he developed a prototype of what would become the first WinFax product, with the agreement that Delrina would be its publisher. In 1990 Delrina devoted a relatively small space to this new product at that year's COMDEX
(a computer trade show), under a sign that said simply: "Send a Fax from Your PC". It garnered the most attention of any Delrina product being demonstrated at that show. This interest convinced the founding partners of the commercial viability of the product. Tony Davis went on to sell his product idea to Delrina, and stayed on as its lead software architect and designer.
The initial version of WinFax only worked on fax modems containing a specific chipset, and was only capable of sending faxes; it could not receive them. This was remedied with the launch of the WinFax PRO 2.0 product during the summer of 1991. One of the key factors that differentiated this version of WinFax from other fax software packages of the time was the deliberate attempt to make the program compatible with all fax/modems. Prior to the introduction of WinFax PRO 2.0, competitors concentrated primarily on building software that would only work with a single brand of fax/modem hardware. At the same time that it launched its WinFax PRO 2.0 product, Delrina also announced an OEM
version of the same product designed to be bundled with new fax/modems. Within a few months, eight modem manufacturers had agreed to bundle this OEM version (called "WinFax LITE") of the program along with their own product. By the summer of the following year this number had grown to 50 OEM partnerships with various fax-modem and computer system manufacturers to bundle the "LITE" version of Delrina's WinFax software with their own products. By February 1993 this number had grown to over 100 OEM partnerships.
Bundling the LITE version of WinFax proved to be lucrative for Delrina. Whenever a person used the program for the first time and submitted their registration information by fax to the company, Delrina would subsequently mail the user an upgrade offer for the PRO version. This sales technique proved to be very effective, and the firm ended up making most of its sales from these upgrades.
In order to reach Apple computer users in this marketplace Delrina acquired Solutions Inc. and their BackFax software for the Macintosh platform in December 1991, which would become "Delrina Fax Pro". A version of the program was also designed for use in DOS
("DosFax PRO") which was launched in June 1992.
Initially looking for ways to further improve its electronic forms software, in November 1991 Delrina had attempted to buy two associated firms that produced Optical Character Recognition
(OCR) software, with the intention of incorporating OCR functionality into its forms products. The acquisition deal fell through, though by Fall 1992 Delrina had made a deal with Caere Corporation
to include its AnyFax OCR software within its products. This functionality was incorporated into WinFax PRO 3.0 in late 1992, and subsequently in FormFlow Despite the agreement with Caere, the subsequent version of WinFax used Xerox
's TextBridge OCR engine instead.
Based on strong sales of WinFax, by October 1992 Delrina posted its first profitable quarter in three years. At the same time, the firm also announced its intention to acquire other software firms that sold into the consumer software market.
, Bloom County
, B.C. and The Far Side
. The firm became a wholly owned subsidiary of Delrina in a deal which also paid down Amaze's $3 million (U.S.) debt and placed two of the firm's directors on Delrina's board. These two individuals were Rowland Hanson, former VP Corporate Communications for Microsoft and George Clut.
The rival screensaver company Berkeley Systems
would later successfully sue the firm over the "Death Toasters" module in Delrina's "Opus 'n Bill" screensaver which featured the iconic "flying toasters" from Berkeley System's After Dark screensaver product. Berkeley Systems sued for copyright
and trademark
infringement.
characters Opus the Penguin
and Bill the Cat
. The initial Opus 'n Bill screensaver, launched in 1993, landed the company in court as its Death Toasters module depicted Opus taking shots at a number of flying toasters, an iconic emblem in Berkeley System's Flying Toasters module from their After Dark screensaver. Berkeley Systems sued for copyright
and trademark
infringement. The following court case of Berkeley Systems Inc. v. Delrina was fought by Delrina on the basis that a software-based parody should fall under the same First Amendment
protection offered to the press.
A preliminary injunction was filed against Delrina in September 1993 which halted the sale of the product, and subsequently forced a recall of it through the court. The case drew political satirist Mark Russell
to speak in defense of Delrina, who argued in favour of the screensaver as a valid parody, while the estate of composer Irving Berlin
sided with Berkeley. Commenting on the case involving his characters, cartoonist Berkeley Breathed
said: "If David Letterman
can depict the NBC peacock
wearing men's boxer shorts, then Delrina should be able to plug a flying toaster with hot lead".
Judge Eugene Lynch
found in favour of Berkeley, citing that a commercial software product was not subject to the same exemptions as parodist literature, and that the toasters were too similar in design. The total cost of the court case and the recalled product was roughly $150,000 U.S.
In the court case, it was also cited that the design for winged toasters was not original and that the Berkeley Systems' design was itself derived from the Jefferson Airplane
album Thirty Seconds Over Winterland
, which also used flying toasters adorned with wings. Berkeley argued that the firm was unaware of the previous artwork until 1991, and that the album cover's toasters had clocks in addition to their wings. Jefferson Airplane later sued Berkeley Systems in turn for the use of the same flying toaster emblem. The rock group lost the case as they did not trademark the album cover at the time of publication.
The court decision has been interpreted by some as an erosion of First Amendment
rights over the increasing protection provided to copyright holders.
While Delrina lost the court case, the publicity it generated was substantial, with coverage in over a thousand newspapers across North America, resulting in consumers turning out in droves to buy the offending program before it could be recalled.
Delrina subsequently removed the wings from the toasters and replaced them with propellers in order to avoid trademark infringement. The module was also renamed from "Death Toasters" to "Censored Toaster Module". Thanks to the publicity from the court case, sales of this new version ended up being triple what had been expected. Updated modules for this particular screensaver were sold for the next couple of years.
Josef Zankowicz, who managed the firm's publicity during this period, later commented: "We had the feeling that we might get sued—actually, we prayed to get sued. Because by suing us, the number one player in the marketplace opened up the door. Anyone can create an interesting product, spend $10 million and create awareness around it. But it's another thing to create a product and spend one-tenth that amount and create twice as much awareness."
This division of the firm at its height only represented less than 15% of the company's total revenues.
The rapid growth in sales of this product was unexpected, with Bennie quoted in an interview from late 1993 as saying "the success of WinFax really caught us by surprise". With the success of the WinFax product, the company grew rapidly. By early 1993 the number of employees had grown to 250, and by the end of the year to 350. The increasing success of the WinFax product consequently led to significant strains on the firm to handle the increasing volume of calls to its Technical Support department, as each of the over 300 modems on the market at the time had their own nuances in how they implemented the fax data standard. Delrina spent roughly $800,000 in an improved telephone infrastructure in an attempt to get wait times to under five minutes. In December 1993 Delrina hired 40 additional people to help alleviate the growing number of calls to the firm for technical support. By the end of 1994 the situation had improved to the point where noted industry commentator Robert X. Cringely
put Delrina in his shortlist of firms providing "exceptional" product support.
In order to further enhance the appeal of its new flagship product, in 1993 the firm established a Communication Services division, designed to tap into the commercial market. The firm started making deals with major telecomm companies, such as BellSouth
and MCI Inc.
in preparation for the services the firm was about to offer. In November of that year the division launched its Fax Broadcast service. The Fax Broadcast service allowed subscribers to upload a single fax and a recipient list to Delrina. Systems at Delrina would then send out the fax to the recipients on that list, to a maximum of 500 fax numbers. A subsequent Fax Mailbox feature—which enabled subscribers to remotely access both fax and voice messages from a single phone number—was initially held up following a dispute with AlphaNet Telecom for the rights to the technology. This dispute was resolved by June 1994, though with both sides publicly disputing the story of the other, and with AlphaNet receiving an undisclosed sum in compensation.
By late 1994 the firm was considered one of the fastest-growing software companies in North America, and employed over 500 people, most located at its offices in Toronto. The firm's financial situation improved greatly, and by February 1995 Delrina was reported to have captured almost three-quarters of the fax software market, was debt-free and had $40 million in the bank. The firm was shipping 200,000 units of WinFax a month, and had an installed base of four million users. The cost of doing business had also improved, as the firm's cost of sales was now 25% of net sales, down from 30% the previous fiscal year, improving the firm's gross profit
s.
at a Microsoft
-sponsored dinner where he asked whether there were any plans to include any fax functionality in their forthcoming operating system (which could become Windows 95
). Gates replied that there were plans to include "base-level fax capability" in the next version of Windows, and suggested that Skapinker get in touch with his development staff in order to produce a value-added product for it.
The firm decided to work on a suite of applications designed to be an enhancement on what was to be available of Windows 95
. In response to a question about Windows 95, Bennie responded by saying: "We are quite convinced that on top of Windows 95, we can build four different applications and will encompass fax, data, telephony or digital voice, and Internet access". This would later become the CommSuite 95
product.
In 1994 the firm acquired AudioFile
, a company that specialized in computer-based voice technology. The company created a product called TalkWorks
, which enabled users to use certain fax/modems as a voice mail client.
Seeing a growing business in online communications utilities, Delrina launched WinComm PRO, a program designed to allow users to access on-line services such as CompuServe
, GEnie
and BBSes
. It was a relative latecomer to the market, which was then dominated at the time by Datastorm
's Procomm series of communications software. Delrina licensed Hilgraeve
's HyperACCESS
software in 1993, and used it as the basis for the initial version of its WinComm
online communications software. The initial version of the product was originally bundled with WinFax as part of the Delrina Communications Suite, but in March 1994 was issued as a standalone product.
Delrina tried to expand aggressively into this market space, first by acquiring the Canadian online bulletin board service CRS Online
, and then using it as a distribution channel for free versions of its WinComm LITE and DOS-based FreeComm products in March 1995.
When the Internet was opened to commercial interests in the mid-1990s, Delrina started to expand in this nascent market space with their Cyberjack 7.0
product, launched in December 1995. Created by a development team based in South Africa, it included a Web browser
, Usenet
news reader, ftp client, IRC
and integration with the Microsoft Exchange email program. The program used an interesting variant of the now-common bookmark, using a "Guidebook" to store information for various Internet addresses.
CommSuite 95
shipped later that same month, bundling WinFax PRO 7.0 along with WinComm PRO 7.0, TalkWorks and the Cyberjack suite of Internet components.
With the release of Windows 95 in August 1995, Delrina was now competing directly against Microsoft in the fax/electronic communications marketplace, as Windows 95 included a basic faxing application as an accessory, along with a licensed version of Hilgraeve
's HyperTerminal
communication package, (which was also used as the basis for Delrina's own WinComm program). While these applications offered only rudimentary fax and online communication services in comparison to the mature Delrina products, Microsoft was perceived as a potentially serious future competitor in the communications market space. The release of the initial version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer
in late 1995 as a free product effectively killed off the early emerging market for non-free browsers, creating a market where Delrina's Cyberjack browser could not hope to compete.
to discuss the possibility of merging the two firms. In September 1995 Delrina's founders—who owned a controlling interest in the firm—sold the firm to Symantec
in a stock deal worth $415 million US. The deal was first announced on July 6 of that year, with shareholders from both firms approving the merger on November 20. The merger was completed on November 22, 1995 and Delrina officially became part of Symantec. The deal made the merged company the fifth largest American software firm at the time. The firm became the "Delrina Group" within Symantec, which brought under its control other communication software products that belonged to the parent firm, such as pcAnywhere
. Bennie joined the Board of Symantec and was also appointed an Executive Vice President.
At its height the company employed more than 700 people worldwide, the majority based in Canada. Symantec was following a general trend of large American firms buying smaller Canadian software companies. Other contemporaneous examples include Softimage
and Zoom-it being bought by Microsoft, and Alias
being bought by Silicon Graphics
.
Parts of the company were subsequently sold off, such as the sale of Delrina's Electronic Forms Division to JetForm
in September 1996. JetForm, which later changed its name to Accelio, was in turn bought by Adobe Systems
. Adobe officially discontinued the electronic forms products in 2004. Creative Wonders
bought the rights to the Echo Lake multimedia product, which was re-shaped as an introductory program on multimedia and re-released as Family Album Creator.
Though the market for fax software would shrink significantly as the use of email became more pervasive, WinFax brought in significant revenue for Symantec; a year after the merger sales of fax software accounted for 10% of Symantec's revenues.
, which developed an early Internet "push content" product. This firm and its technology were sold just over a year after its inception to Backweb, a NASDAQ listed Software Company, Davis remained president and Bennie was brought on as Director. Skapinker and Davis then went on to found Brightspark, a software venture capital firm.
Bennie would move on as the founder XDL Capital, a company which manages venture capital funds. XDL Capital -appropriately named after "Ex Delrina" - raised money for two funds: XDL Ventures (XDL), raising $25 million in 1997, and XDL Intervest (XDLI) raising $155 million in 1999. David Latner, former legal counsel for Delrina, was a partner in both funds, and Amato (former partner, Delrina) was an advisor and major investor to XDL Capital. He also participated in several investee companies as a Director and/or Advisor.
XDL Intervest focuses primarily on internet- specific entrepreneurial companies and Bennie brought in two new principals: Tony Van Marken, former CEO of Architel Systems Corp. (ASYC), and Michael Bregman, former CEO of Second Cup Ltd. (T.SKL). XDL has assembled an established board and advisory team, which includes Canadian billionaire Robert Young, a Hamilton, Ontario native, who co-founded, and remains chairman, Red Hat Inc (RHAT). Several of XDL venture investments were in companies, started or run by ex- Delrina employees who founded successful business, fostered by the innovative and entrepreneurial environment of Delrina. A few of the successes today are listed below:
Delano Founded by Bahman Koohestani
, another early developer at Delrina, was a company which developed e-business solutions for corporations. XDL Capital provided seed capital prior to Delano listing publicly. Bennie was the Chairman. Delano was listed on NASDAQ (DTEC) was subsequently sold to divine
in 2003.
Pinpoint Software Corporation a leading supplier of software solutions for managing networked PCs, was founded in 1992 by Lou Ryan. Ryan was CEO & President with Bennie acting as director. Pinpoint was partially funded by XDL Capital. Pinpoint changed its name to ClickNet Software in 1998. Uniting the company name with the successful ClickNet product family name strengthens the product and corporate identity. The company was eventually renamed Entercept Security Technologies Inc. In 2004, Entercept was sold to Network Associates for $120M where they incorporated Entercept's technology into its McAfee line of antivirus protection and other security products.
Protégé Software was formed in 1996 and was founded by Larry Levy, Delrina’s European Managing Director. Levy acted as President and CEO with Bennie as the principal investor. The company raised a $120M round of finance with XDL Intervest participating in 2003. Protégé has successfully launched 20 U.S. companies in Europe, nine of which are among Red Herring Top 50 Private Companies. In addition, five of these companies have gone public during Protégé’s tenure with them. The company was ultimately sold to various buyers including Warburg Pincus after the internet bubble burst.
Netect Ltd., an XDL financed venture developing network security software, was purchased by Bindview Development Corporation (NASDAQ:BVEW) in 2001. Marc Camm (Ex Delrina GM Desktop Communications Business Unit)) was brought on by Bennie to manage Netect. After the Company was purchased, Camm joined Bindview as the E.V.P. of Marketing. Prior to joining Netect, Marc was the general manager of Symantec and systems group product manager for Microsoft Canada.
Within a few years all of Delrina's major market focuses — fax and form software — would be overtaken or superseded by email, e-commerce and the Internet. Daily planning software remains a niche market, and the immersive 3D environment used for creating multimedia presentations has (so far) fallen by the wayside in favour of more traditional user interfaces. Symantec ended support for its final WinFax PRO product in June, 2006.
Delrina is best remembered by its former employees as an incubator for ideas and for providing industry experience to the many people who would go on to work at subsequent software and hardware companies, many in the Toronto region. A forum exists on Yahoo called "xdelrina", where many former employees of the firm continue to keep in contact with each other.
The company's first product was PerForm, an electronic forms software package. PerForm and its sibling product, FormFlow, (which was aimed at workgroup and enterprise-level electronic forms processing and delivery) became the leading products in its market. Delrina competed against WordPerfect
's Informs package, Microsoft
's Electronic Forms Designer, Novell
's Informs, Lotus Software
's Forms and JetForm
's JetForm Workflow software.
PerForm and FormFlow were designed to allow users to create self-contained form applications which could be passed back and forth across a network. Both PerForm and FormFlow consisted of two distinct parts: "Designer", which created the form application, and "Filler", so users could submit the forms either by fax or, later, e-mail. The program could ease repetitive fill tasks, include mandatory fields, and use an input mask
to accept only data entered in a valid format. The information could be saved and restored in a dBase
file that used a Public-key cryptography system to encrypt the data running from client to server.
The initial version of PerForm was designed for the Graphical Environment Manager
(better known as "GEM"), a DOS-based windowing system. Later versions of this program, known as PerForm PRO, were designed to work under Windows 3.1 and subsequent Windows operating system
s. PerForm PRO 3.0 included integration with Delrina's own WinFax software, and included a range of automation tools.
As PerForm captured the retail market, it became apparent that there was a need for electronics forms delivery and processing at the workgroup and enterprise levels. In 1994 Delrina FormFlow was released, which was designed to meet this need. One of the key features of FormFlow 1.1 was forms integration with email, and its Filler module was available for DOS, Windows and Unix
.
Several versions of the WinFax product were released over the next few years, initially for Windows 3.x
and then a Windows 95-based version. WinFax PRO 2.0 for Windows was released in July 1991. The Windows versions were also localized to major European and Asian languages. The company made further in-roads by establishing tie-ins with modem manufacturers such as U.S. Robotics
and Supra
that bundled simple versions of the product (called "WinFax LITE") that offered basic functionality. Those wanting more robust features were encouraged to upgrade to the "PRO" version, and were offered significant discounts over the standalone retail version. All of this rapidly established WinFax as the de facto fax software. By 1994 almost one hundred companies were bundling versions of WinFax in with their own product, including IBM
, Compaq
, AST Research, Gateway 2000, Intel and Hewlett-Packard
.
WinFax PRO 3.0 was launched in late 1992 for Windows 3.x machines. This was followed by a version for Macintosh systems. The "Lite" version of WinFax 3.0 was bundled as OEM software by a number of fax-modem manufacturers, which was later be superseded by WinFax Lite 4.0 a couple of years later.
The release of WinFax PRO 4.0 in March 1994 brought together a number of key features and technologies. It introduced an improved OCR
engine, introduced improvements aimed specifically at mobile fax users, better on-screen fax viewing capabilities and a focus on consistency and usability of the interface. It also included for the first time the ability to integrate directly with popular email products that were beginning to emerge in the marketplace, such as cc:Mail
and Microsoft Mail
. It was preceded by a Workgroup version of the same product, which allowed a number of users to share a single fax modem on a networked system. The stand-alone version of the product was also later bundled with a grayscale scanner, and sold as WinFax Scanner.
The final Delrina-branded version of WinFax was WinFax PRO 7.0, which shipped in late 1995, the subsequent version 8.0 being a Symantec product. There was no intervening version 5.0 or 6.0, and the jump to version 7.0 was purely a marketing decision, based on keeping up with the suite of products in Microsoft Office
which were then at the same number. It also reflected the development effort required to develop the first full 32-bit application
version, designed to work with the Windows 95
operating system, which set it apart from its competition at the time.
By the time WinFax PRO 7.0 was being sold from retail shelves, Delrina had been acquired by Symantec.
Screensavers were designed to ensure that there would be no phosphor burn-in of images left on a CRT
-based screen. Delrina added sound and basic interactivity with its series of screensaver products, arguably qualifying it as an early form of multimedia.
Under Delrina several of the already-licensed cartoons brought over from their acquisition of Amaze Inc. were further developed into screensaver applications. The "Opus 'n Bill Brain Saver", which would land the company in court for copyright violations, was launched in 1993. Subsequent screensavers include a licensed version based on the first Flintstone
live-action movie, and "The Scott Adams Dilbert
Screen Saver Collection" which came out in September 1994.
A notable multimedia software produced by Delrina was Echo Lake
, an early form of scrapbook software that came out in June 1995. During development it was touted internally as a "cross [of] Quark Xpress and Myst
". It featured an immersive 3D environment where a user could manipulate objects within a virtual desktop in a virtual office and assemble video and audio clips along with images, and then send them as either a virtual book other users of the program could then access, or its content could be printed. It was an innovative product for its time, and ultimately was hampered by the inability of many users to easily input or playback their own multimedia content into a computer from that period.
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
company founded by four individuals, Dennis Bennie as CEO and chairman, Mark Skapinker as president, Bert Amato as executive vice president and chief technical officer and Lou Ryan as executive vice president of world wide sales. The company was established during 1988 in Toronto, Ontario and was subsequently acquired by the American software firm Symantec
Symantec
Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
in 1995. These four founders started the Delrina venture together and ended the venture still together six years later. Delrina was Bennie's second major entrepreneurial start up after co-founding Mission Electronics, still today a leading international home theatre equipment company. Delrina's business strategy was to "establish technical and market leadership in niche markets", which it accomplished with its electronic form and PC-based fax software. Delrina's electronic form products included PerForm
PerForm
PerForm and PerForm PRO were electronic form programs, initially designed to work under GEM in DOS. Later versions were designed to work in Windows 3.1, at which point it was succeeded by FormFlow....
and FormFlow
FormFlow
FormFlow was the name of a line of electronic forms products initially created and sold by Delrina in the early- to mid-1990s. The first product in this line was PerForm, which was designed to work under GEM in DOS...
, but it was best known for its WinFax
WinFax
WinFax is a Microsoft Windows-based software product designed to let computers equipped with fax-modems to communicate directly to stand-alone fax machines, or other similarly equipped computers.-History:...
software package. WinFax enabled computers equipped with fax
Fax
Fax , sometimes called telecopying, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material , normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device...
-modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
s to transmit faxes to standalone fax machines or other similarly equipped computers. Delrina also produced a set of popular screensaver
Screensaver
A screensaver is a type of computer program initially designed to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT and plasma computer monitors by blanking the screen or filling it with moving images or patterns when the computer is not in use...
s, including one that resulted in a well-publicized lawsuit for copyright and trademark infringement (Berkeley Systems Inc.
Berkeley Systems
Berkeley Systems was a San Francisco Bay Area software company co-founded in 1987 by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. It made money early on by performing contract work for the National Institutes of Health, specifically in making modifications to the Macintosh so that it could be used by partially...
v. Delrina). The case set a precedent
Precedent
In common law legal systems, a precedent or authority is a principle or rule established in a legal case that a court or other judicial body may apply when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts...
in American law whereby satiric
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
commercial software products are not subject to the same First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
exemptions as parodic
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
cartoons or literature.
The firm grew steadily over the course of the early 1990s, with revenues from WinFax amounting to 80% of the company's revenues. It attempted to diversify into other areas such with online communications software with its WinComm
WinComm
WinComm was a communications software package that was offered by Delrina in the mid 1990s.Seeing a growing business in online communications utilities, Delrina launched WinComm PRO. It was used primarily to connect to Bulletin Board Systems of the time, prior to the advent of the Internet...
product and produced a Web browser called Cyberjack
Cyberjack
Cyberjack was the name for a Web browser application created by Delrina in 1995. It was sold as a stand-alone product, and was also bundled as part of Delrina's CommSuite 95 offering....
. The firm was sold to Symantec
Symantec
Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
in 1995. After the company was acquired by Symantec, various divisions were sold off and several of Delrina's former executives went on to found venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
firms.
Corporate history
Delrina was founded in Toronto in 1988 by ZimbabweZimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
an expatriate Bert Amato
Bert Amato
Bert Amato is an investor and consultant in the high-technology industry. He currently sits as an advisory board member of several firms, including XDL Intervest Management, Farelogix and Infotriever....
, South African expatriates Mark Skapinker
Mark Skapinker
Mark Skapinker is a Managing Partner at Brightspark, a software venture capital firm based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Born in South Africa, he immigrated to Canada where, along with Bert Amato, he co-founded Delrina, where they devised its first product, the electronic form software PerForm. He...
and Dennis Bennie
Dennis Bennie
Dennis Bennie is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of XDL Capital Corporation, a venture capital firm focusing on Internet software.In the late 1980s, Bennie was the CEO at Carolian Systems International, which was a firm that made business software for Hewlett-Packard...
and American Lou Ryan. A year before the firm was incorporated, Amato and Skapinker had quit their jobs to start work on an electronic forms product which would eventually become PerForm
PerForm
PerForm and PerForm PRO were electronic form programs, initially designed to work under GEM in DOS. Later versions were designed to work in Windows 3.1, at which point it was succeeded by FormFlow....
. Both would later meet with Bennie, who was then the Chief Executive Officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
of Carolian Systems International, a firm that made business software for Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
. Bennie facilitated an initial seed investment of $1.5 million CAD to finance a new start-up company, "Delrina", to develop this idea. In return, Carolian received 51% of Delrina's shares.
Delrina's initial corporate headquarters was located in a small office on Mount Pleasant St in Toronto. A sales office was set up in San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
which became its worldwide sales center run by co-founder Lou Ryan. From its Toronto headquarters, the company expanded by establishing branch offices in Kirkland, Washington
Kirkland, Washington
Kirkland is a city in King County, Washington, United States. It is a suburb of Seattle on the Eastside . The population was 48,787 at the 2010 census makes it the 9th largest city in King County and the 20th largest city in the state...
; Washington, DC; and Lexington, Massachusetts
Lexington, Massachusetts
Lexington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 31,399 at the 2010 census. This town is famous for being the site of the first shot of the American Revolution, in the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775.- History :...
. Other offices were later established in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Origins of PerForm
Delrina's initial product offering was an electronic forms application called PerFormPerForm
PerForm and PerForm PRO were electronic form programs, initially designed to work under GEM in DOS. Later versions were designed to work in Windows 3.1, at which point it was succeeded by FormFlow....
. Amato and Skapinker came up with the idea for the product while working as consultants that what their clients wanted was a way to fill in forms electronically, rather than an easier way to create paper-based forms from a computer. There was significant and long-term uptake of electronic forms products within governmental agencies both in Canada and the United States, the latter spurred on in particular by the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act
Paperwork Reduction Act
The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-511, 94 Stat. 2812 , codified in part at Subchapter I of Chapter 35 of Title 44 of the United States Code, through , is a United States federal law enacted in 1980 that gave authority over the collection of certain information to the Office of...
to reduce the total amount of paperwork handled by the United States government. One of the firm's early major software deals included a multi-year agreement to sell PerForm to the U.S. Navy in 1990. Soon after the software was installed on Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
laptops that accompanied U.S. troops during the First Gulf War, where it was used to requisition "everything from Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
to privies
Outhouse
An outhouse is a small structure separate from a main building which often contained a simple toilet and may possibly also be used for housing animals and storage.- Terminology :...
". Other significant volume sales went to 3M
3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
and Rockwell International
Rockwell International
Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate in the latter half of the 20th century, involved in aircraft, the space industry, both defense-oriented and commercial electronics, automotive and truck components, printing presses, valves and meters, and industrial automation....
. What helped set apart Delrina's electronic forms from its competitors in product reviews included its easy-to-use interface, its extensive development tools, and its comparatively low price. It also scored highly when it came to workflow and routing functions as well as security features. In early 1991 InfoWorld
InfoWorld
InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...
selected PerForm Pro
as its "Product of the Year" in the electronic forms
category, and PC World Magazine gave the product it's "Best Buy" designation. PerForm proved to be successful in its niche, effectively capturing the retail market by 1993.
In the early 1990s Delrina made deals with value-added resellers like NCR
NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation is an American technology company specializing in kiosk products for the retail, financial, travel, healthcare, food service, entertainment, gaming and public sector industries. Its main products are self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, automated teller machines, check...
and GE Information Services
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
who had the staff to customize the product to the needs of corporate customers looking to move away from paper-based forms. The forms products sold well and the annual revenues for the firm grew steadily; 1989 annual revenues (in Canadian dollars) were $5,630,393, in 1990 they were $8,759,623, and by 1991 they were $11,894,474.
Struggle for profitability
Despite the growing revenues, the company struggled to make a profit. Heavy expenditures—primarily marketing along with research and development costs—drove the firm's losses from $500,000 from 1989 to $1.5 million by the end of the following fiscal year. For fiscal 1991 it posted a net loss of $1.7 million.Needing an infusion of funds, in April 1991 Bennie managed to raise $7.7 million in a private placement
Private placement
Private placement is a funding round of securities which are sold without an initial public offering, usually to a small number of chosen private investors...
.
The firm subsequently sought to find ways to more widely distribute its electronic form software, with Bennie saying in May 1992 that "we've barely scratched the surface of our market".
In early 1992 word leaked to the press on a possible merger between WordStar International Inc.
MicroPro International
MicroPro International Corporation was the publisher of WordStar, a popular early word processor for personal computers.-History:Seymour I. Rubinstein was an employee of early microcomputer company IMSAI, where he negotiated software contracts with Digital Research and Microsoft...
, and soon after both firms made public the fact that they had signed a letter of intent on a merger deal. However, just over a month later word came out that the merger talks had fallen through, at the time cited to differences over "complex legal, accounting and management issues". WordStar, whose share of the word processing
Word processing
Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.-External links:...
market had by that time fallen to 5% (from a high of 80%) was seeking Delrina's advanced technologies while Delrina was hoping to utilize the other firm's established global sales network. Despite the failure of the merger talks, Bennie said soon after that "we're still convinced that a larger sales force would give us the kind of marketing clout we need. I still believe that it's possible for us to become a global operation". Not long after WordStar merged with Spinnaker Software Corporation
Spinnaker Software
Spinnaker Software was a 1982 founded software company known primarily for its line of non-curriculum based educational software, which was a major seller during the 1980s. It was founded by chairman Bill Bowman and president C. David Seuss....
and SoftKey Software Products Inc. to form SoftKey International
SoftKey
SoftKey International was a publisher and distributor of CD-ROM based personal computer software for Windows and Macintosh computers during the 1990s. Their products typically consisted of software intended for home audiences, especially compilation discs containing various freeware or shareware...
. Delrina subsequently signed deals with Wallace Computer Services, UARCO and NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation is an American technology company specializing in kiosk products for the retail, financial, travel, healthcare, food service, entertainment, gaming and public sector industries. Its main products are self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, automated teller machines, check...
in an effort to gain greater sales distribution of its products.
Development of WinFax
In a deliberate attempt to diversify the business, The Company chose to move into the fax software market with its WinFaxWinFax
WinFax is a Microsoft Windows-based software product designed to let computers equipped with fax-modems to communicate directly to stand-alone fax machines, or other similarly equipped computers.-History:...
product. Software developer Tony Davis (another South African expatriate who had moved to Canada) was initially hired as a consultant to work on the forms line of products in the late 1980s, soon afterwards becoming part of that team. In his spare time he developed a prototype of what would become the first WinFax product, with the agreement that Delrina would be its publisher. In 1990 Delrina devoted a relatively small space to this new product at that year's COMDEX
COMDEX
COMDEX was a computer expo held in Las Vegas, Nevada, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually second only to the German CeBIT, and by many accounts one of the largest trade shows in any industry sector...
(a computer trade show), under a sign that said simply: "Send a Fax from Your PC". It garnered the most attention of any Delrina product being demonstrated at that show. This interest convinced the founding partners of the commercial viability of the product. Tony Davis went on to sell his product idea to Delrina, and stayed on as its lead software architect and designer.
The initial version of WinFax only worked on fax modems containing a specific chipset, and was only capable of sending faxes; it could not receive them. This was remedied with the launch of the WinFax PRO 2.0 product during the summer of 1991. One of the key factors that differentiated this version of WinFax from other fax software packages of the time was the deliberate attempt to make the program compatible with all fax/modems. Prior to the introduction of WinFax PRO 2.0, competitors concentrated primarily on building software that would only work with a single brand of fax/modem hardware. At the same time that it launched its WinFax PRO 2.0 product, Delrina also announced an OEM
OEM
OEM means the original manufacturer of a component for a product, which may be resold by another company.OEM may also refer to:-Computing:* OEM font, or OEM-US, the original character set of the IBM PC, circa 1981...
version of the same product designed to be bundled with new fax/modems. Within a few months, eight modem manufacturers had agreed to bundle this OEM version (called "WinFax LITE") of the program along with their own product. By the summer of the following year this number had grown to 50 OEM partnerships with various fax-modem and computer system manufacturers to bundle the "LITE" version of Delrina's WinFax software with their own products. By February 1993 this number had grown to over 100 OEM partnerships.
Bundling the LITE version of WinFax proved to be lucrative for Delrina. Whenever a person used the program for the first time and submitted their registration information by fax to the company, Delrina would subsequently mail the user an upgrade offer for the PRO version. This sales technique proved to be very effective, and the firm ended up making most of its sales from these upgrades.
In order to reach Apple computer users in this marketplace Delrina acquired Solutions Inc. and their BackFax software for the Macintosh platform in December 1991, which would become "Delrina Fax Pro". A version of the program was also designed for use in DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
("DosFax PRO") which was launched in June 1992.
Initially looking for ways to further improve its electronic forms software, in November 1991 Delrina had attempted to buy two associated firms that produced Optical Character Recognition
Optical character recognition
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
(OCR) software, with the intention of incorporating OCR functionality into its forms products. The acquisition deal fell through, though by Fall 1992 Delrina had made a deal with Caere Corporation
Nuance Communications
Nuance Communications is a multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA, that provides speech and imaging applications...
to include its AnyFax OCR software within its products. This functionality was incorporated into WinFax PRO 3.0 in late 1992, and subsequently in FormFlow Despite the agreement with Caere, the subsequent version of WinFax used Xerox
Xerox
Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
's TextBridge OCR engine instead.
Based on strong sales of WinFax, by October 1992 Delrina posted its first profitable quarter in three years. At the same time, the firm also announced its intention to acquire other software firms that sold into the consumer software market.
Acquisition of Amaze Inc.
In October 1992 Delrina acquired Amaze Inc., based out of Kirkland, Washington. The firm created daily planner software, providing time management features while providing some humour by featuring licensed cartoon strips like CathyCathy (comic strip)
Cathy was a comic strip drawn by Cathy Guisewite. It featured a woman who struggled through the "four basic guilt groups" of life — food, love, mom, and work — the strip gently poked fun at the lives and foibles of modern women. Cathy's characteristics and issues both made fun of and...
, Bloom County
Bloom County
Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where...
, B.C. and The Far Side
The Far Side
The Far Side is a popular single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from January 1, 1980, to January 1, 1995. Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world,...
. The firm became a wholly owned subsidiary of Delrina in a deal which also paid down Amaze's $3 million (U.S.) debt and placed two of the firm's directors on Delrina's board. These two individuals were Rowland Hanson, former VP Corporate Communications for Microsoft and George Clut.
The rival screensaver company Berkeley Systems
Berkeley Systems
Berkeley Systems was a San Francisco Bay Area software company co-founded in 1987 by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. It made money early on by performing contract work for the National Institutes of Health, specifically in making modifications to the Macintosh so that it could be used by partially...
would later successfully sue the firm over the "Death Toasters" module in Delrina's "Opus 'n Bill" screensaver which featured the iconic "flying toasters" from Berkeley System's After Dark screensaver product. Berkeley Systems sued for copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
and trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
infringement.
Berkeley Systems Inc. v. Delrina
One of Delrina's screensaver products was based on the licensed Bloom CountyBloom County
Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where...
characters Opus the Penguin
Opus the Penguin
Opus the Penguin is a character in the comic strips and children's books of Berkeley Breathed, most notably the popular 1980s strip Bloom County. Breathed has described him as an "existentialist penguin" and the favorite of his many characters...
and Bill the Cat
Bill the Cat
Bill the Cat, or Bill D. Cat, according to the final Outland strip, is a fictional cat appearing in the works of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, beginning with the comic strip Bloom County in the 1980s and continuing in Outland and Opus in the following decades...
. The initial Opus 'n Bill screensaver, launched in 1993, landed the company in court as its Death Toasters module depicted Opus taking shots at a number of flying toasters, an iconic emblem in Berkeley System's Flying Toasters module from their After Dark screensaver. Berkeley Systems sued for copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
and trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
infringement. The following court case of Berkeley Systems Inc. v. Delrina was fought by Delrina on the basis that a software-based parody should fall under the same First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
protection offered to the press.
A preliminary injunction was filed against Delrina in September 1993 which halted the sale of the product, and subsequently forced a recall of it through the court. The case drew political satirist Mark Russell
Mark Russell
Mark Russell is an American political satirist/comedian. He also sings and plays the piano.-Biography:...
to speak in defense of Delrina, who argued in favour of the screensaver as a valid parody, while the estate of composer Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
sided with Berkeley. Commenting on the case involving his characters, cartoonist Berkeley Breathed
Berkeley Breathed
Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed is an American cartoonist, children's book author/illustrator, director and screenwriter, best known for Bloom County, a 1980s cartoon-comic strip that dealt with sociopolitical issues as understood by fanciful characters and through humorous analogies...
said: "If David Letterman
David Letterman
David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...
can depict the NBC peacock
NBC logos
The National Broadcasting Company has used several corporate logos over its history, yet the peacock is its most well known.-Microphone logo :...
wearing men's boxer shorts, then Delrina should be able to plug a flying toaster with hot lead".
Judge Eugene Lynch
Eugene F. Lynch
Eugene F. Lynch is a former United States federal judge.Born in San Francisco, California, Lynch received a B.S. from the University of Santa Clara in 1953 and an LL.B. from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in 1958. He was in the United States Army from 1953 to 1955. He was in...
found in favour of Berkeley, citing that a commercial software product was not subject to the same exemptions as parodist literature, and that the toasters were too similar in design. The total cost of the court case and the recalled product was roughly $150,000 U.S.
In the court case, it was also cited that the design for winged toasters was not original and that the Berkeley Systems' design was itself derived from the Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
album Thirty Seconds Over Winterland
Thirty Seconds Over Winterland
-Personnel:Personnel credits from original Vinyl release.*Jack Casady – bass*Paul Kantner – vocals, rhythm guitar*Jorma Kaukonen – lead guitar, vocals*Grace Slick – vocals*Papa John Creach – electric violin*John Barbata – drums, percussion...
, which also used flying toasters adorned with wings. Berkeley argued that the firm was unaware of the previous artwork until 1991, and that the album cover's toasters had clocks in addition to their wings. Jefferson Airplane later sued Berkeley Systems in turn for the use of the same flying toaster emblem. The rock group lost the case as they did not trademark the album cover at the time of publication.
The court decision has been interpreted by some as an erosion of First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
rights over the increasing protection provided to copyright holders.
While Delrina lost the court case, the publicity it generated was substantial, with coverage in over a thousand newspapers across North America, resulting in consumers turning out in droves to buy the offending program before it could be recalled.
Delrina subsequently removed the wings from the toasters and replaced them with propellers in order to avoid trademark infringement. The module was also renamed from "Death Toasters" to "Censored Toaster Module". Thanks to the publicity from the court case, sales of this new version ended up being triple what had been expected. Updated modules for this particular screensaver were sold for the next couple of years.
Josef Zankowicz, who managed the firm's publicity during this period, later commented: "We had the feeling that we might get sued—actually, we prayed to get sued. Because by suing us, the number one player in the marketplace opened up the door. Anyone can create an interesting product, spend $10 million and create awareness around it. But it's another thing to create a product and spend one-tenth that amount and create twice as much awareness."
This division of the firm at its height only represented less than 15% of the company's total revenues.
Success of WinFax
The increasing success of the WinFax product lead to a dramatic growth in revenues for the firm; by 1992 its sales had climbed to $19,208,420, and more than doubling the next year to $48,583,932. The rapid acceptance of this program in the market soon overtook that of the initial forms product in terms of revenues, and within a few years of its launch, WinFax would account for 80% of the company's revenues. By 1994 the firm had sold more than 3 million copies of WinFax, and it regularly featured in the "Top 10" lists of software applications sold during this period.The rapid growth in sales of this product was unexpected, with Bennie quoted in an interview from late 1993 as saying "the success of WinFax really caught us by surprise". With the success of the WinFax product, the company grew rapidly. By early 1993 the number of employees had grown to 250, and by the end of the year to 350. The increasing success of the WinFax product consequently led to significant strains on the firm to handle the increasing volume of calls to its Technical Support department, as each of the over 300 modems on the market at the time had their own nuances in how they implemented the fax data standard. Delrina spent roughly $800,000 in an improved telephone infrastructure in an attempt to get wait times to under five minutes. In December 1993 Delrina hired 40 additional people to help alleviate the growing number of calls to the firm for technical support. By the end of 1994 the situation had improved to the point where noted industry commentator Robert X. Cringely
Robert X. Cringely
Robert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld, the one-time weekly computer trade newspaper published by IDG.- Biography :...
put Delrina in his shortlist of firms providing "exceptional" product support.
In order to further enhance the appeal of its new flagship product, in 1993 the firm established a Communication Services division, designed to tap into the commercial market. The firm started making deals with major telecomm companies, such as BellSouth
BellSouth
BellSouth Corporation is an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S...
and MCI Inc.
MCI Inc.
MCI, Inc. is an American telecommunications subsidiary of Verizon Communications that is headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia...
in preparation for the services the firm was about to offer. In November of that year the division launched its Fax Broadcast service. The Fax Broadcast service allowed subscribers to upload a single fax and a recipient list to Delrina. Systems at Delrina would then send out the fax to the recipients on that list, to a maximum of 500 fax numbers. A subsequent Fax Mailbox feature—which enabled subscribers to remotely access both fax and voice messages from a single phone number—was initially held up following a dispute with AlphaNet Telecom for the rights to the technology. This dispute was resolved by June 1994, though with both sides publicly disputing the story of the other, and with AlphaNet receiving an undisclosed sum in compensation.
By late 1994 the firm was considered one of the fastest-growing software companies in North America, and employed over 500 people, most located at its offices in Toronto. The firm's financial situation improved greatly, and by February 1995 Delrina was reported to have captured almost three-quarters of the fax software market, was debt-free and had $40 million in the bank. The firm was shipping 200,000 units of WinFax a month, and had an installed base of four million users. The cost of doing business had also improved, as the firm's cost of sales was now 25% of net sales, down from 30% the previous fiscal year, improving the firm's gross profit
Gross profit
In accounting, gross profit or sales profit is the difference between revenue and the cost of making a product or providing a service, before deducting overhead, payroll, taxation, and interest payments...
s.
The impact of Windows 95
In November 1992 Skapinker met Bill GatesBill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
at a Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
-sponsored dinner where he asked whether there were any plans to include any fax functionality in their forthcoming operating system (which could become Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
). Gates replied that there were plans to include "base-level fax capability" in the next version of Windows, and suggested that Skapinker get in touch with his development staff in order to produce a value-added product for it.
The firm decided to work on a suite of applications designed to be an enhancement on what was to be available of Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
. In response to a question about Windows 95, Bennie responded by saying: "We are quite convinced that on top of Windows 95, we can build four different applications and will encompass fax, data, telephony or digital voice, and Internet access". This would later become the CommSuite 95
CommSuite 95
CommSuite 95 was a communications software "suite" of products launched by the Canadian software company Delrina in December, 1995. It was a 32-bit based program created specifically for use in Windows 95...
product.
In 1994 the firm acquired AudioFile
AudioFile (company)
AudioFile was a software company that was founded in Massachusetts in 1990. It was founded under Venture Capital Investment by the Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation....
, a company that specialized in computer-based voice technology. The company created a product called TalkWorks
TalkWorks
TalkWorks was a program designed to allow computers equipped with an appropriate fax-modem to act as a voice mail program.Original work was done on the program by AudioFile, a company that specialized in computer-based voice technology. This firm was bought by Delrina in 1994, which then rolled...
, which enabled users to use certain fax/modems as a voice mail client.
Seeing a growing business in online communications utilities, Delrina launched WinComm PRO, a program designed to allow users to access on-line services such as CompuServe
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
, GEnie
GEnie
GEnie was an online service created by a General Electric business - GEIS that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around 350,000 users. Peak simultaneous usage was around 10,000 users...
and BBSes
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
. It was a relative latecomer to the market, which was then dominated at the time by Datastorm
Datastorm Technologies, Inc.
Datastorm was a computer software company that existed from 1986 until 1996. The company was founded by Bruce Barkelew and Thomas Smith.Datastorm and their software, ProComm, was prominent in a pre-TCP/IP world where computer-to-computer modem connections were common...
's Procomm series of communications software. Delrina licensed Hilgraeve
Hilgraeve
Hilgraeve is a software firm based out of Monroe, Michigan, and is best known for its HyperTerminal Private Edition and HyperACCESS programs. In earlier years, HyperTerminal had been licensed for use by Microsoft in versions of Windows ranging from Windows 95 to Windows XP.The company was founded...
's HyperACCESS
HyperACCESS
HyperACCESS is the name for a number of successive computer communications software, made by Hilgraeve.It was the first software product from Hilgraeve, and it was initially designed to let 8-bit Heath computers communicate over a modem. In 1985 this same product was ported to IBM PCs and...
software in 1993, and used it as the basis for the initial version of its WinComm
WinComm
WinComm was a communications software package that was offered by Delrina in the mid 1990s.Seeing a growing business in online communications utilities, Delrina launched WinComm PRO. It was used primarily to connect to Bulletin Board Systems of the time, prior to the advent of the Internet...
online communications software. The initial version of the product was originally bundled with WinFax as part of the Delrina Communications Suite, but in March 1994 was issued as a standalone product.
Canada Remote Systems
Canada Remote Systems, or simply CRS, was a major commercial bulletin board system located in the Toronto area. It was one of the earliest commercial systems outside the "big iron" companies such as CompuServe or The Source, and survived into the 1990s before being overwhelmed by the Internet and...
, and then using it as a distribution channel for free versions of its WinComm LITE and DOS-based FreeComm products in March 1995.
When the Internet was opened to commercial interests in the mid-1990s, Delrina started to expand in this nascent market space with their Cyberjack 7.0
Cyberjack
Cyberjack was the name for a Web browser application created by Delrina in 1995. It was sold as a stand-alone product, and was also bundled as part of Delrina's CommSuite 95 offering....
product, launched in December 1995. Created by a development team based in South Africa, it included a Web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
, Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
news reader, ftp client, IRC
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
and integration with the Microsoft Exchange email program. The program used an interesting variant of the now-common bookmark, using a "Guidebook" to store information for various Internet addresses.
CommSuite 95
CommSuite 95
CommSuite 95 was a communications software "suite" of products launched by the Canadian software company Delrina in December, 1995. It was a 32-bit based program created specifically for use in Windows 95...
shipped later that same month, bundling WinFax PRO 7.0 along with WinComm PRO 7.0, TalkWorks and the Cyberjack suite of Internet components.
With the release of Windows 95 in August 1995, Delrina was now competing directly against Microsoft in the fax/electronic communications marketplace, as Windows 95 included a basic faxing application as an accessory, along with a licensed version of Hilgraeve
Hilgraeve
Hilgraeve is a software firm based out of Monroe, Michigan, and is best known for its HyperTerminal Private Edition and HyperACCESS programs. In earlier years, HyperTerminal had been licensed for use by Microsoft in versions of Windows ranging from Windows 95 to Windows XP.The company was founded...
's HyperTerminal
HyperACCESS
HyperACCESS is the name for a number of successive computer communications software, made by Hilgraeve.It was the first software product from Hilgraeve, and it was initially designed to let 8-bit Heath computers communicate over a modem. In 1985 this same product was ported to IBM PCs and...
communication package, (which was also used as the basis for Delrina's own WinComm program). While these applications offered only rudimentary fax and online communication services in comparison to the mature Delrina products, Microsoft was perceived as a potentially serious future competitor in the communications market space. The release of the initial version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
in late 1995 as a free product effectively killed off the early emerging market for non-free browsers, creating a market where Delrina's Cyberjack browser could not hope to compete.
Acquisition by Symantec and Aftermath
In late Spring of 1995, Delrina Chairman Dennis Bennie met with Symantec CEO Gordon EubanksGordon Eubanks
Gordon Eubanks is a microcomputer industry pioneer who worked with Gary Kildall in the early days of Digital Research. Eubanks attended Oklahoma State University. Dr. Kildall was his graduate thesis advisor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California...
to discuss the possibility of merging the two firms. In September 1995 Delrina's founders—who owned a controlling interest in the firm—sold the firm to Symantec
Symantec
Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
in a stock deal worth $415 million US. The deal was first announced on July 6 of that year, with shareholders from both firms approving the merger on November 20. The merger was completed on November 22, 1995 and Delrina officially became part of Symantec. The deal made the merged company the fifth largest American software firm at the time. The firm became the "Delrina Group" within Symantec, which brought under its control other communication software products that belonged to the parent firm, such as pcAnywhere
PcAnywhere
pcAnywhere is a suite of computer programs by Symantec which allows a user of the pcAnywhere remote program on a computer to connect to a personal computer running the pcAnywhere host if both are connected to the internet or the same LAN and the password is known...
. Bennie joined the Board of Symantec and was also appointed an Executive Vice President.
At its height the company employed more than 700 people worldwide, the majority based in Canada. Symantec was following a general trend of large American firms buying smaller Canadian software companies. Other contemporaneous examples include Softimage
Softimage
Softimage, Co. was a company located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada that produced 3D animation software. Their flagship products, Softimage 3D and Softimage XSI, are used in the creation of computer animation for films, television advertisement, and video games...
and Zoom-it being bought by Microsoft, and Alias
Alias Systems Corporation
Alias Systems Corporation , headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was a software company that produced high-end 3D graphics software. The company was formed in 1995 when Silicon Graphics bought Alias Research, which was founded in 1983, and Wavefront Technologies, founded in 1984, then merged...
being bought by Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
.
Parts of the company were subsequently sold off, such as the sale of Delrina's Electronic Forms Division to JetForm
JetForm
JetForm was the name of a Canadian software manufacturer created by four consultants that was based out of Ottawa, Ontario, and an electronic form software product of the same name....
in September 1996. JetForm, which later changed its name to Accelio, was in turn bought by Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
. Adobe officially discontinued the electronic forms products in 2004. Creative Wonders
Creative Wonders
Creative Wonders was an educational software corporation from 1994 to 1999. It created computer games based on children's characters like Madeline, Sesame Street, Arthur, The Baby-sitters Club and Schoolhouse Rock!.-History of the company:...
bought the rights to the Echo Lake multimedia product, which was re-shaped as an introductory program on multimedia and re-released as Family Album Creator.
Though the market for fax software would shrink significantly as the use of email became more pervasive, WinFax brought in significant revenue for Symantec; a year after the merger sales of fax software accounted for 10% of Symantec's revenues.
Post-Delrina
Delrina was a catalyst for entrepreneurial talen and greatness as many of the principals and employees of Delrina went on to find new successful ventures. With investments from Skapinker and Amato, and Bennie as lead Director, Davis went on to form LanacomLanacom
Lanacom was a software firm based in Toronto, founded by ex-Delrina executive Tony Davis. It focused on "push" content software for the Internet. In early 1997 the firm released a product called "Headliner", a program which automatically collated and delivered content derived from Internet sources...
, which developed an early Internet "push content" product. This firm and its technology were sold just over a year after its inception to Backweb, a NASDAQ listed Software Company, Davis remained president and Bennie was brought on as Director. Skapinker and Davis then went on to found Brightspark, a software venture capital firm.
Bennie would move on as the founder XDL Capital, a company which manages venture capital funds. XDL Capital -appropriately named after "Ex Delrina" - raised money for two funds: XDL Ventures (XDL), raising $25 million in 1997, and XDL Intervest (XDLI) raising $155 million in 1999. David Latner, former legal counsel for Delrina, was a partner in both funds, and Amato (former partner, Delrina) was an advisor and major investor to XDL Capital. He also participated in several investee companies as a Director and/or Advisor.
XDL Intervest focuses primarily on internet- specific entrepreneurial companies and Bennie brought in two new principals: Tony Van Marken, former CEO of Architel Systems Corp. (ASYC), and Michael Bregman, former CEO of Second Cup Ltd. (T.SKL). XDL has assembled an established board and advisory team, which includes Canadian billionaire Robert Young, a Hamilton, Ontario native, who co-founded, and remains chairman, Red Hat Inc (RHAT). Several of XDL venture investments were in companies, started or run by ex- Delrina employees who founded successful business, fostered by the innovative and entrepreneurial environment of Delrina. A few of the successes today are listed below:
Delano Founded by Bahman Koohestani
Bahman Koohestani
Bahman Koohestani is a former executive at Netscape, and was the co-founder of the Toronto software company Delano. He had formerly run the messaging division at Netscape, and Delano was founded to create software to allow companies to easily transfer information between their back and front offices...
, another early developer at Delrina, was a company which developed e-business solutions for corporations. XDL Capital provided seed capital prior to Delano listing publicly. Bennie was the Chairman. Delano was listed on NASDAQ (DTEC) was subsequently sold to divine
Divine (corporation)
divine inc, was a Chicago-based company that started out as an Internet Incubator named divine interVentures. The company was founded by Andrew 'Flip' Filipowski in 1999....
in 2003.
Pinpoint Software Corporation a leading supplier of software solutions for managing networked PCs, was founded in 1992 by Lou Ryan. Ryan was CEO & President with Bennie acting as director. Pinpoint was partially funded by XDL Capital. Pinpoint changed its name to ClickNet Software in 1998. Uniting the company name with the successful ClickNet product family name strengthens the product and corporate identity. The company was eventually renamed Entercept Security Technologies Inc. In 2004, Entercept was sold to Network Associates for $120M where they incorporated Entercept's technology into its McAfee line of antivirus protection and other security products.
Protégé Software was formed in 1996 and was founded by Larry Levy, Delrina’s European Managing Director. Levy acted as President and CEO with Bennie as the principal investor. The company raised a $120M round of finance with XDL Intervest participating in 2003. Protégé has successfully launched 20 U.S. companies in Europe, nine of which are among Red Herring Top 50 Private Companies. In addition, five of these companies have gone public during Protégé’s tenure with them. The company was ultimately sold to various buyers including Warburg Pincus after the internet bubble burst.
Netect Ltd., an XDL financed venture developing network security software, was purchased by Bindview Development Corporation (NASDAQ:BVEW) in 2001. Marc Camm (Ex Delrina GM Desktop Communications Business Unit)) was brought on by Bennie to manage Netect. After the Company was purchased, Camm joined Bindview as the E.V.P. of Marketing. Prior to joining Netect, Marc was the general manager of Symantec and systems group product manager for Microsoft Canada.
Within a few years all of Delrina's major market focuses — fax and form software — would be overtaken or superseded by email, e-commerce and the Internet. Daily planning software remains a niche market, and the immersive 3D environment used for creating multimedia presentations has (so far) fallen by the wayside in favour of more traditional user interfaces. Symantec ended support for its final WinFax PRO product in June, 2006.
Delrina is best remembered by its former employees as an incubator for ideas and for providing industry experience to the many people who would go on to work at subsequent software and hardware companies, many in the Toronto region. A forum exists on Yahoo called "xdelrina", where many former employees of the firm continue to keep in contact with each other.
Forms products
WordPerfect
WordPerfect is a word processing application, now owned by Corel.Bruce Bastian, a Brigham Young University graduate student, and BYU computer science professor Dr. Alan Ashton joined forces to design a word processing system for the city of Orem's Data General Corp. minicomputer system in 1979...
's Informs package, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's Electronic Forms Designer, Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
's Informs, Lotus Software
Lotus Software
Lotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts...
's Forms and JetForm
JetForm
JetForm was the name of a Canadian software manufacturer created by four consultants that was based out of Ottawa, Ontario, and an electronic form software product of the same name....
's JetForm Workflow software.
PerForm and FormFlow were designed to allow users to create self-contained form applications which could be passed back and forth across a network. Both PerForm and FormFlow consisted of two distinct parts: "Designer", which created the form application, and "Filler", so users could submit the forms either by fax or, later, e-mail. The program could ease repetitive fill tasks, include mandatory fields, and use an input mask
Input mask
In computer programming, an input mask refers to a string expression, defined by a developer, that governs what a user is allowed to enter in as input in a text box. It can be said to be a template, or set format that entered data must conform to, mainly used for the purposes of data integrity by...
to accept only data entered in a valid format. The information could be saved and restored in a dBase
DBASE
dBase II was the first widely used database management system for microcomputers. It was originally published by Ashton-Tate for CP/M, and later on ported to the Apple II and IBM PC under DOS...
file that used a Public-key cryptography system to encrypt the data running from client to server.
The initial version of PerForm was designed for the Graphical Environment Manager
Graphical Environment Manager
GEM was a windowing system created by Digital Research, Inc. for use with the CP/M operating system on the Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors...
(better known as "GEM"), a DOS-based windowing system. Later versions of this program, known as PerForm PRO, were designed to work under Windows 3.1 and subsequent Windows operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s. PerForm PRO 3.0 included integration with Delrina's own WinFax software, and included a range of automation tools.
As PerForm captured the retail market, it became apparent that there was a need for electronics forms delivery and processing at the workgroup and enterprise levels. In 1994 Delrina FormFlow was released, which was designed to meet this need. One of the key features of FormFlow 1.1 was forms integration with email, and its Filler module was available for DOS, Windows and Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
.
WinFax
WinFax enabled computers equipped with fax-modems to send faxes directly to stand-alone fax machines or other similarly equipped computers.Several versions of the WinFax product were released over the next few years, initially for Windows 3.x
Windows 3.1x
Windows 3.1x is a series of 16-bit operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers. The series began with Windows 3.1, which was first sold during March 1992 as a successor to Windows 3.0...
and then a Windows 95-based version. WinFax PRO 2.0 for Windows was released in July 1991. The Windows versions were also localized to major European and Asian languages. The company made further in-roads by establishing tie-ins with modem manufacturers such as U.S. Robotics
U.S. Robotics
USRobotics Corporation is a company that makes computer modems and related products. It sold high-speed modems in the 1980s, and had a reputation for high quality and compatibility. With the reduced usage of voiceband modems in North America in the early 21st century, USR is now one of the few...
and Supra
Supra, Inc.
Supra, Inc., previously known as Supra Corporation, were best known as manufacturers of modems for personal computers, but also produced a range of hardware for the Amiga, including SCSI controllers, memory boards, and processor accelerators....
that bundled simple versions of the product (called "WinFax LITE") that offered basic functionality. Those wanting more robust features were encouraged to upgrade to the "PRO" version, and were offered significant discounts over the standalone retail version. All of this rapidly established WinFax as the de facto fax software. By 1994 almost one hundred companies were bundling versions of WinFax in with their own product, including IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
, AST Research, Gateway 2000, Intel and Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
.
WinFax PRO 3.0 was launched in late 1992 for Windows 3.x machines. This was followed by a version for Macintosh systems. The "Lite" version of WinFax 3.0 was bundled as OEM software by a number of fax-modem manufacturers, which was later be superseded by WinFax Lite 4.0 a couple of years later.
The release of WinFax PRO 4.0 in March 1994 brought together a number of key features and technologies. It introduced an improved OCR
Optical character recognition
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
engine, introduced improvements aimed specifically at mobile fax users, better on-screen fax viewing capabilities and a focus on consistency and usability of the interface. It also included for the first time the ability to integrate directly with popular email products that were beginning to emerge in the marketplace, such as cc:Mail
Cc:Mail
cc:Mail is an obsolete, store-and-forward LAN-based e-mail system originally developed on Microsoft's MS-DOS platform by Hubert Lipinski in the 1980s. At the height of its popularity cc:Mail had about 21 million users.-Message store:...
and Microsoft Mail
Microsoft Mail
Microsoft Mail was the name given to several early Microsoft e-mail products.-Mac Networks:The first Microsoft Mail product was introduced in 1988 for AppleTalk Networks. It was based on InterMail, a product that Microsoft purchased and updated. An MS-DOS client was added for PCs on AppleTalk...
. It was preceded by a Workgroup version of the same product, which allowed a number of users to share a single fax modem on a networked system. The stand-alone version of the product was also later bundled with a grayscale scanner, and sold as WinFax Scanner.
The final Delrina-branded version of WinFax was WinFax PRO 7.0, which shipped in late 1995, the subsequent version 8.0 being a Symantec product. There was no intervening version 5.0 or 6.0, and the jump to version 7.0 was purely a marketing decision, based on keeping up with the suite of products in Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
which were then at the same number. It also reflected the development effort required to develop the first full 32-bit application
32-bit application
On the x86 architecture, a 32-bit application normally means software that typically uses the 32-bit linear address space possible with the 80386 and later chips...
version, designed to work with the Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
operating system, which set it apart from its competition at the time.
By the time WinFax PRO 7.0 was being sold from retail shelves, Delrina had been acquired by Symantec.
Multimedia products
Cathode ray tube
The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and...
-based screen. Delrina added sound and basic interactivity with its series of screensaver products, arguably qualifying it as an early form of multimedia.
Under Delrina several of the already-licensed cartoons brought over from their acquisition of Amaze Inc. were further developed into screensaver applications. The "Opus 'n Bill Brain Saver", which would land the company in court for copyright violations, was launched in 1993. Subsequent screensavers include a licensed version based on the first Flintstone
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
live-action movie, and "The Scott Adams Dilbert
Dilbert
Dilbert is an American comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. First published on April 16, 1989, Dilbert is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office featuring the engineer Dilbert as the title character...
Screen Saver Collection" which came out in September 1994.
Echo Lake
Echo Lake (software)
Echo Lake was perhaps the most notable multimedia software product produced by Delrina, which debuted in February 1995. It was touted internally as a "cross [of] Quark Xpress and Myst"...
, an early form of scrapbook software that came out in June 1995. During development it was touted internally as a "cross [of] Quark Xpress and Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
". It featured an immersive 3D environment where a user could manipulate objects within a virtual desktop in a virtual office and assemble video and audio clips along with images, and then send them as either a virtual book other users of the program could then access, or its content could be printed. It was an innovative product for its time, and ultimately was hampered by the inability of many users to easily input or playback their own multimedia content into a computer from that period.
List of Delrina products
- Electronic Forms Products
- Delrina PerForm – October 1988
- Delrina PerForm PRO – August 1990
- Delrina PerForm Tracer - June 1991
- Delrina PerForm PRO Plus - August 1992
- Delrina FormFlow - October 1993
- Delrina FormFlow 1.1 – June 1994
- PerForm for Windows 3.0 – November 1994
- MultimediaMultimediaMultimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
Products- The Far Side Daily Planner and Calendar Publisher 3.0 - September 1991
- Delrina Intermission 4.0 Screen Saver - November 1990
- Bill 'n' Opus ScreenSaver – November 1993
- Opus 'n Bill On The Road Again Screensaver – September 1994
- The Scott Adams Dilbert Screen Saver Collection – September 1994
- Echo Lake – June 1995
- Fax-related Products (released by Delrina)
- WinFax 1.0 – December 1990
- WinFax PRO 2.0 – June 1991
- WinFax Lite - April 1992
- DosFax Lite - April 1992
- DosFax PRO 2.0 – June 1992
- WinFax PRO 3.0 – November 1992
- Delrina Fax PRO 1.5 for Macintosh – September 1993
- WinFax PRO for Networks - November 1993
- WinFax PRO 4.0 – March 1994
- WinFax Scanner – 1994
- WinFax PRO 7.0 – November 1995
- Fax-related Products (released by SymantecSymantecSymantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
)- WinFax PRO 7.5 (bundled with TalkWorksTalkWorksTalkWorks was a program designed to allow computers equipped with an appropriate fax-modem to act as a voice mail program.Original work was done on the program by AudioFile, a company that specialized in computer-based voice technology. This firm was bought by Delrina in 1994, which then rolled...
) – October 1996 - WinFax PRO 8.0 (bundled with TalkWorks PRO) – March 1997
- TalkWorks PRO 2.0 – August 1998
- WinFax PRO 9.0 – August 1998
- TalkWorks PRO 3.0 – August 1999
- WinFax PRO 10.0 – February 2000
- WinFax PRO 7.5 (bundled with TalkWorks
- Online Communications Products
- Delrina Communications Suite (WinComm and WinFax) – March 1993
- WinComm (Standalone) – March 1994
- Cyberjack – December 1995
- CommSuite95 – December 1995