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Delrina

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Delrina
Company typePublic (NASDAQ:DENAF), (TSE:DC)
(no longer extant; bought by Symantec in 1995)
IndustryComputer software
Founded1988
HeadquartersToronto, Ontario, Canada
Key people
Dennis Bennie, Chairman & CEO
Mark Skapinker, President
Bert Amato, Executive Vice President & Chief Technical Officer
Tony Davis, VP of Communications Software Strategy
ProductsWinFax, PerForm, FormFlow, Echo Lake, Cyberjack, WinComm, TalkWorks , CommSuite 95
RevenueCdn. $132.9 million (sales) (1995)
Number of employees
700 (1995)
Websitewww.delrina.com (Wayback Machine archive)

Delrina was a Canadian-based software company based out of Toronto, Ontario that existed between 1988 to 1995, prior to being bought by the American software firm Symantec. Delrina started out by producing a set of electronic form products known as PerForm and later, FormFlow. However, the company was best known for its WinFax software package of the early- to mid-1990s, which enabled computers equipped with fax-modems to communicate faxes to stand-alone fax machines or other similarly-equipped computers. It also produced a set of popular screen-savers, including one that would cause the company to be sued by competitor Berkeley Systems for copyright and trademark infringement. The resulting case, Berkley Systems Inc. v. Delrina, set a precedent in American law that commercial products were not subject to the same exemptions as parodic literature. After the buyout by Symantec in 1995, parts of the firm were sold off, but Symantec continues to sell the WinFax product to this day (2005). In its wake, several of Delrina's principles founded venture capital firms that continue to have a lasting impact on the Canadian software industry.

Beginnings

The company was founded in 1988 by Zimbabwe expatriate Bert Amato, and South African expatriates Mark Skapinker and Dennis Bennie. The previous year, Amato and Skapinker came up with the idea of creating electronic business form software. They met with Bennie, who was then the Chief Executive Officer of Carolian Systems International, a firm that made business software for Hewlett-Packard. He arranged for an initial seed investment of Cdn. $1.5 million to create a new start-up company to develop this idea, which was called "Delrina", a name derived from the family members of Bennie's family: DEnnis, Laura, RIckie, and daNA.

For much of its existence its headquarters was located at 895 Don Mills Road, in the Morneau Sorbeco Centre in the northern part of Toronto. The company would extend its reach worldwide, and would eventually have branch offices located in San Jose, California; Kirkland, Washington; Washington, DC; and Lexington, Massachusetts as well as other offices in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Sample form created in Delrina PerForm Designer, circa 1994

Forms products

The company's first product was PerForm, an electronic forms software package. This and its sibling product FormFlow (which was aimed at workgroup and enterprise-level electronic forms processing and delivery) became the leading products of its class, both of which specialized in workflow forms processing prior to the commercial impact of the Internet and the advent of Web-based forms.

The products 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", used to create the form application, and "Filler", so users could submit the forms either by fax, and later, email. The program could ease repetitive fill tasks, include mandatory fields, and use a "mask" to accept only data entered in a valid format. The information could be saved and restored in a dBase file, and it 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 by its acronym "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 systems. 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. There was significant and long-term uptake of these products in governmental agencies both in Canada[1] and the United States[2], the latter facilitated by efforts of the Washington sales office. 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.

While the electronic forms products launched the company, it was WinFax that brought it into the popular market.

File:WinFax3-AboutScreen.jpg
The "About" screen for WinFax 3.0 from 1992, depicting several of its principal programmers.

WinFax

Software developer Tony Davis was hired as a consultant to work on the forms line of products in the late 1980s, and soon afterwards became part of that team. In his spare time he developed a prototype of what would become the first WinFax product, which enabled computers equipped with fax-modems to send faxes directly to stand-alone fax machines or other similarly equipped computers, with the agreement that Delrina would be its publisher. This was done primarily in the interest of retaining a good developer within the firm rather than part of a deliberate strategy to enter the computer-to-fax marketplace. In 1990 Delrina devoted a relatively small space to this new product at that year's COMDEX, where it easily garnered the most attention of the Delrina product being demonstrated, which then convinced Amato and Skapinker of the commercial viability of the product. 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[3]. Tony Davis went on to sell his product idea to Delrina, and stayed on as its lead software architect, strategist and designer.[4]

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. Versions were also created for the Apple Macintosh ("Delrina Fax Pro") and DOS ("DosFax"). The Windows version was also localized to major European and Asian languages. The company made further significant in-roads by establishing significant tie-ins with modem manufacturers such as U.S. Robotics and Supra that bundled simple versions of the product (called "WinFax LITE") which was designed to encourage people to buy the "PRO" version. All of this rapidly established WinFax the de facto fax software. By 1994 almost 100 companies were bundling versions of WinFax, including IBM, Compaq, AST Research, Gateway 2000, Intel and Hewlett-Packard[5].

WinFax PRO 3.0 was launched in November 1993 for Windows 3.x machines. This was followed by a version for Macintosh systems. This version of this product saw long life as a "non-PRO" version that was bundled with various fax modems by the end of its product cycle.

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 soon followed by a Networked version of the same product, which allowed a number of users to share a single fax modem on a networked system. This version of the product was also bundled with a grayscale scanner, and sold as WinFax Scanner.

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. This program would later be bundled with subsequent versions of WinFax and the CommSuite 95 product. The voice mail capabilities of this product are now integrated with the latest version of WinFax (version 10, as of 2005).

The final Delrina-made version of WinFax was WinFax PRO 7.0, which shipped in November 1995. 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 Microsoft's suite of Office products which were then at the same number. It was the first Delrina product designed to work with the Windows 95 operating system, and was a full 32-bit application, setting it apart from its competition at the time.

With the release of Windows 95 earlier that year, Delrina was now competing directly against Microsoft, which included a basic faxing application with the operating system, 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 the most rudimentary fax and online communication services, Microsoft was perceived as a potentially serious competitor that had just decided to enter the communications market space.

By the time this product hit the streets, Delrina had become part of Symantec.

Multimedia products

Next to WinFax, Delrina was probably best known for its series of screensaver products. 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 some interactivity with its series of screensaver products, arguably qualifying it as an early form of multimedia.

In late 1992 Delrina acquired Amaze Inc., based out of Kirkland, Washington[6]. The firm created daily planner software, providing time management functionality while providing some accompanying humour featuring cartoon strips like Cathy, Bloom County, B.C. and The Far Side. Under Delrina several of these licensed cartoons were developed into screensaver applications, as was 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. All of the screensaver products were developed out of the Kirkland office.

Box shot of Delrina's Opus 'n Bill Brain Saver screensaver, whose "Death Toasters" module landed the company in court

Berkley Systems Inc. v. Delrina

The most popular screensaver was based on the licensed Bloom County Opus and Bill the Cat characters. The initial "Opus 'n Bill" screensaver launched in 1993 landed the company in court as one of its modules depicted Opus taking shots at a number of flying toasters, an iconic emblem in Berkley System's "Flying Toasters" module from their After Dark screensaver product. Berkeley Systems sued for copyright and trademark infringement. The following court case of Berkley Systems Inc. v. Delrina drew political satirist Mark Russell to speak in defense of Delrina, arguing that the screensaver was a parody, and should therefore exempt from trademark protection.

A preliminary injunction was filed against Delrina in October 1993 which halted the sale of the product, with Berkeley forcing a recall of the product[7]. Judge Eugene Lynch found in favour of Berkeley, citing that a commercial product was not subject to the same exemptions as parodist literature, and that the toasters were too similar in design.

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". Updated modules for this particular screensaver were sold for the next couple of years.

File:JeffersonAirplane-30SecondsOverWinterland(album-cover).jpg
The Jefferson Airplane album, Thirty Seconds Over Winterland from 1973, with the original depiction of flying winged toasters

In the court case, it was also found that the design for winged toasters was not original and that the Berkeley 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[8]. Jefferson Airplane later sued Berkeley in turn for the use of the same flying toaster emblem, which was used on one of their album covers. The rock group lost the case as they did not copyright the album cover at the time of publication.

Despite the publicity generated by the case, Delrina lost hundreds of thousands of dollars over the affair[9]. The decision itself has been interpreted by some as an erosion of First Amendment rights over the increasing protection provided to copyright holders[10].

The rustic virtual desktop environment for the "multimedia family album" software Echo Lake

Echo Lake

The most notable multimedia software produced by Delrina was Echo Lake, an early form of scrapbook software that came out in February 1995. During development it was touted internally as a "cross [of] Quark Xpress and Myst"[11]. It featured an immersive 3D environment where a user could go to 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 access, or to print. It was a highly innovative product for its time, and ultimately was hampered by the inability of many users able to input their own multimedia content easily into a computer from that period.


File:DelrinaCommSuite95-BoxShot.jpg
Product box shot of Delrina CommSuite 95

Online services and the Internet

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 and BBSes. It was a relative latecomer to the market, which was then dominated time by Datastorm's Procomm series of communications software. It licensed Hilgraeve's HyperACCESS software in 1993[12], 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, and was arguably the first product of its type to change seamlessly from one application type to another (i.e. Web browser to ftp client) as needed.

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. It used the Telephony Application Programming Interface (better known by its acronym, "TAPI"), so that it could discriminate whether an incoming call was a fax, data communications, or a regular voice call.

Acquisition by Symantec and aftermath

In 1995 Delrina's founders sold the firm to Symantec in a stock deal worth over Cdn. $500 million. The deal was announced in July 6 of that year, with shareholders from both firms approving the merger on November 20. The merger was considered complete on November 22, 1995[13]. Both Dennis Bennie and Bert Amato resigned their positions at Delrina in May 1996, the former also resigning from Symantec's board of directors at that time.

Symantec was following a general trend of larger American firms buying out Canadian software companies. Other contemporaneous examples included: Softimage and Zoom-it by Microsoft, and Alias by Silicon Graphics.

At its height the company employed more than 700 people world-wide, the majority of who were based in Canada.

WinFax (as of 2005, at Version 10.0) is still available as a product from Symantec.[14]

Parts of the company were subsequently sold off, such as the sale of Delrina's Group Electronic Forms Division to JetForm in September 1996. JetForm, which later changed its name to Accelio, was in turn bought by Adobe, and the electronic forms products were officially end-of-lifed in 2004[15].

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.

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.

Post-Delrina

Many of the principles and employees of Delrina went off to spin off new firms or work at other software companies. With investments from Skapinker and Amato, and Bennie as chairman, Davis went on to form Lanacom, which developed an early Internet "push content" product. This firm and its technology were sold just over a year after its inception. Skapinker and Davis then went on to found Brightspark, a software venture capital firm. Bahman Koohestani (another early developer at Delrina), along with Davis also founded Delano, which developed e-business solutions for corporations, and had Amato and Bennie as major investors. Delano was subsequently sold to divine. Bennie also set up a separate capital venture firm, XDL Intervest Capital, a venture capital firm that focuses on Internet-specific entrepreneurial companies.

Despite the seeming threat posed by Microsoft in the online communications and fax markets back in 1995, the company has not made significant improvements to its communications software; in Windows 95 the fax software was dropped, and it still licenses HyperTerminal from Hilgraeve. However, Microsoft's Internet Explorer would become the dominant Web browser in the years after Cyberjack was released.

Delrina is best remembered by its former employees as an incubator for ideas and for providing industry experience for 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 keep in contact with each other.

Annual Revenues

  • 1989: 5,630,393
  • 1990: 8,759,623
  • 1991: 11,894,474
  • 1992: 19,208,420
  • 1993: 48,583,932

Fiscal year ended June 30[16]. The majority of the revenue was generated out of the San Jose office, which coordinated retail sales. The Toronto HQ was responsible for OEM sales, and the Washington sales office was responsible primarily for delivering governmental sales.

List of Delrina products

  • Electronic Forms Products
    • Delrina FormFlow 1.1 - June 1994
    • PerForm for Windows 3.0 - November 1994
  • Multimedia Products
    • Bill 'n' Opus ScreenSaver - September 1993
  • The Scott Adams Dilbert Screen Saver Collection - September 1994
  • Echo Lake - February 1995
  • Online Communications Products
    • Delrina Communications Suite (WinComm and WinFax) - March 1993
    • WinComm (Standalone) - March 1994
    • Cyberjack - December 1995
    • CommSuite95 - December 1995
  • WinFax PRO
    • WinFax 1.0 - 1990
    • WinFax PRO 2.0 - 1991
    • WinFax PRO 3.0 - November 1992
    • Delrina Fax PRO – 1993 (Macintosh)
    • WinFax PRO 4.0 - March 1994
    • WinFax Scanner - 1994
    • WinFax PRO 7.0 - November 1995

Trivia

  • The company name was derived from the names of founder Dennis Bennie's family: DEnnis, Laura, RIkki, and daNA.
  • The Delrina Web team ended up creating the first unified Symantec Web site shortly after the buyout in 1995. The Delrina team had extensive experience creating a Web infrastructure thanks to the work done to promote the Cyberjack browser and CommSuite 95, and managed to bring together all of the then disparate Symantec product-line Web sites into a single corporate Web site structure.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Information derived from paragraphs 15-17 of article "Seeds Sown at Delrina are still sprouting", accessed October 31, 2005
  2. ^ Information derived from a submission by Tony Davis on the xdelrina forum, accessed October 30, 2005
  3. ^ 1994 Delrina Corporate Report
  4. ^ Quote derived from developer Kevin Steele's reminiscences about the development of the Echo Lake product, found at http://www.kevinsteele.com/mackerel_el_story.html, accessed October 23, 2005
  5. ^ Hilgraeve company timeline, accessed November 11, 2005
  6. ^ "Symantec Completes Merger with Delrina and Continues to Develop Market-Leading Communications and Forms Software”, Wayback Machine archived Symantec press release, accessed October 31, 2005
  7. ^ Delrina 1993 Annual Corporate Report
  8. ^ "Legacy JetForm/Accelio Form Products FAQ", PDF, accessed November 3, 2005 http://www.adobe.com/products/server/readerextensions/pdfs/jetform_faq.pdf

References

  • Burger, Dale Delrina enters cyberspace with buyout of CRS Online Computing Canada, March 29, 1995
  • Clarkson, Stephen Uncle Sam and Us, University of Toronto Press, 2002. ISBN 0802085393
  • Delrina, Annual Corporate Reports, 1990-1993
  • Johnson, Ian "Delrina seeking hardware sales with WinFax Scanner", Computing Canada, May 17, 1995
  • Kerr, Monta Delrina merger will mean job cuts - Symantec buys out Delrina, ensuing changes, Computing Canada, July 19, 1995
  • Lesk, Michael Practical Digital Libraries: Books, Bytes, and Bucks, Morgan Kaufmann, 1997. ISBN 1558604596
  • Reid, Robert Architects of the Web, John Wiley & Sons, 1997. ISBN 0471171875
  • Steed, Judy Seeds sown at Delrina are still sprouting, Toronto Star, May 20, 2000
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