Seems Visualize Inc has been Bought – Serious Blow to VantagePoint
I've been using VantagePoint for quite a while, and a few weeks ago I sent in a few questions to the technical contact I've been using in the past and got an automated reply that he'd left the company, and all further requests need to go to Gordon, whom I've come to believe is the lead developer on VantagePoint. So I forwarded my questions to Gordon.
A few days later, I got a reply from 'Dawn' saying that we appeared to be in arrears on the maintenance agreement to the tune of some $20k+, and we needed to come current with that, and answer a few questions about our usage of VantagePoint, and then she'd allow the technical support guy (Gordon) to answer my questions.
Well... it took a while because the maintenance bills were sent to the paying agency, which, for a hedge fund, isn't always the same as the hedge fund. So, that's why we haven't been getting them. There were a few harsh words, until 'Dawn' figured out what was happening, and that this was a good way for them to get $9k/yr for doing essentially nothing, and things got back on track.
Gordon has been helping me since things got cleared away, but this morning I was just looking at a recent reply he sent me and I noticed that he cc:'ed a Dawn McKeever - at McKeever Financial. I had to look them up.
I've suspected that there was a management shake-up at Visualize Inc, because of the way they treated us, but I didn't suspect them to get bought out by an accounting company. Holy Cow! The web site for McKeever Financial isn't nearly as professionally done as the one for Visualize Inc. While that doesn't mean they didn't have the money, and that Visualize Inc wasn't in trouble.
It's just that when one of the owners is doing the Accounts Receivable, you know it's a small shop. And when it's an accounting firm, you know their priority is not going to be a high-performance Java graphing/visualization package. So chances are, the company got into trouble, and as an added asset, they included the software and it's users as part of the deal. But the guy had to go back to what he was more "billable" at, and now the support for VantagePoint is part-time on evenings and weekends.
It's just too bad. I really liked the package. It had a lot of promise, and yet I know it's only a matter of time before it's stale and dies of neglect. If they had just given up and given the users the code in escrow, then we'd be able to do something with it. But they didn't. Shucks.