WebGain Inc., a leading Java tool supplier, has withdrawn its registration statement from the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering.
WebGain officials notified the SEC last Friday that it had canceled plans to go public. “Given todays unbalanced market conditions, WebGain has decided that it is not appropriate to consider a public offering at this time,” said Joe Menard, chairman and CEO.
Menard was appointed chairman and CEO of the Santa Clara, Calif., company in April 2000. He was the former head of BEA Systems WebLogic Application Server unit. WebGain, Menard said, “will aggressively pursue its strategic initiatives and plan for the time when the market is more conducive to new offerings.”
WebGain was created by middleware software supplier BEA Systems, Inc. and the venture capital firm Warburg Pincus in January 2000. One of its first steps was to acquire the VisualCafe Java development tool from Symantec Corp. as John Thompson made his first moves as CEO of that company. Thompson had decided Symantec should focus on its antivirus and security software business, and negotiated the sale of its development tool.
WebGain has since rounded out its tools offering with a high end, integrated development environment called WebGain Studio. This product suite includes VisualCafe and automates database connections for Java applications and Enterprise JavaBeans, or modules of Java code that can be called by an application for a specific service.
The Studio suite also includes WebGain Structure Builder, an application design environment that uses Universal Modeling Language. Structure Builder designs can be used to generate code. Additionally, the suite includes TopLink, for tying Enterprise JavaBeans and Java objects to relational databases, such as Oracle, as well as Macromedia Dreamweaver for developing Web applications.
