ClioSoft Sends An SOS To Enable Synchronization By RICHARD SPRINGER, India-West Staff Reporter SAN JOSE, Calif. - Srinath Anantharaman, president and founder of ClioSoft, Inc., came to the realization in late 1996 that companies were having problems with their engineers keeping up with changes in files and data, without stopping their current work assignments. Anantharaman told India-West that many firms are so focused on factors in the marketplace or product development that they don't put enough emphasis on in-house team productivity. With this business opportunity in mind, he transformed his consulting business to found ClioSoft in early 1997, and the company shipped its first product about a year later. ClioSoft's major clients including Alcatel, Lucent, NEC, StorageTek and Thomson. Named after Clio, the Greek muse of history, ClioSoft's Source Code Management System (SOS) about two months ago introduced a new version with Internet-enabled technology. "With the new version," Anantharaman said, "the productivity benefits of SOS can now be realized by design teams that are spread over multiple sites, using different platforms, anywhere in the world." SOS supports Unix, Windows and Linux platforms. "Engineers can use different operating systems running on different platforms and still work together while sharing a common SOS project repository," the company said. Based in Fremont, Calif., ClioSoft was self-funded by Anantharaman, who has about 17 years of experience in the electronic design automation industry. He was previously a partner at Proxy Modeling, a consulting company. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and Washington University in St. Louis, he has held engineering positions at Synopsys, ViewLogic and Silvar-Lisco. Sanjay Patel, ClioSoft's vice president of sales and marketing, who joined ClioSoft in 1997 after the two executives exchanged e-mails, heads EDA Direct, a San Jose, Calif.-based high-tech distribution company. Their joining hands to distribute ClioSoft's products through EDA Direct "was a nice fit," said Patel, who has executive experience at IKOS Systems and National Semiconductor and graduated with master's degrees in computer science and engineering from Santa Clara University. After some early "growing pains," Anantharaman said, 1999 was "a very good year." He sees no need to seek a buyout or an initial public offering and is focussing on growing sales, he said. The company has an offshore development facility in Pune which is being managed by an experienced engineer who moved back to India after working in the U.S. at ClioSoft. Anantharaman said that the goal for the company in 2000 is to move beyond sales to engineering groups in companies to forge "more corporate-level deals." Patel said the sales approach is to act like "missionaries" in convincing companies that the key to improving team productivity and product quality resides in efficiently managing data, and improving company communication.

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