Admiral quintet to play for IMM

French software company IMM put Admiral Software's nose out of joint last week as it recruited five of Admiral's former staff to will sell Cyrano database tools direct.

The exclusive distribution deal that Admiral Software had in the UK has been broken as Cyrano has hired the Admiral staff to create a UK startup company.

Peter Huish, UK country manager of Cyrano UK, which began trading in March this year, was formerly client/server manager at Admiral Software.

But IMM, developers of the Cyrano tools, wooed him away from Admiral to start a UK branch.

Roy Garlick also left Admiral to become Cyrano's sales and channel manager while Gareth Evans is the company's technical manager, also recruited from Admiral. Two unnamed sales and marketing staff also joined from Admiral.

Philippe de la Gardette, VP of sales and marketing at IMM, said that his firm was pleased to have a direct presence in the UK. He was reluctant to discuss how the proportion of sales will be split between Admiral and Cyrano UK.

'We are sharing the pots and the target is to reach $2 million. It's possible with direct sales but there is no reason to work against Admiral,' he said.

De la Gardette admitted Admiral originally had an exclusive deal to sell Cyrano software in the UK. 'If we want to achieve those targets it is important to have a good relationship with Admiral, who opened up the market,' he said.

Cyrano's database tools sniff out problems in RDBMS code.