Ounce of Prevention Software is a Division of Aviar, Inc.

OUR CORE BELIEFS

We believe in quality, in making the best products we can.
We believe if someone finds a "bug" in our system, it is our duty to fix it.
We believe that good support makes for satisfied users.
We believe that with some software, you actually "don't get what you pay for" and this is wrong.
We believe that the needs of Maintenance Management are best served by a small, self-contained, network of Personal Computers dedicated to Maintenance and ONLY Maintenance.

We believe that if you buy software and it sits on the shelf you have wasted your money.
Our company does not cater to the common, the ordinary, those who follow the crowd, but rather those who strive for something better.
There are many CMMS packages available, we believe Oz is the very best CMMS on the market.

- Albert Einstein

Where have we been? Where are we going? Aviar, Inc. has seen many changes since it was founded in 1984 to write custom software for PCs. For one thing, PCs had just been introduced and there were many skeptics who thought PCs would never fly. The 3.5 inch disk was introduced. Gui operating systems were introduced, Windows, OS/2, Unix. Networks were introduced. So, where are we now and where do we go from here? We have a DOS maintenance-management package, OOPS!®; Doctor OOPS!®, a trouble-shooting module; and P.S.OOPS!®, a stand-alone or add-on purchasing system module.

We feel that our DOS-based CMMS, OOPS!®, was a work of art, but we did not stop there. We developed a truly "object-oriented" CMMS; Oz is upward compatible with the OOPS!® CMMS. Nothing from OOPS!® has been lost in cyberspace in the making of Oz. The Oz graphical-user CMMS is sold only as a turnkey system. That means less hassle for you. Everything you need in one reasonably priced package.

If you would like to see screen shots click:

Because of our decision not to develop for the Windows platforms, some people have questioned our business judgment. . . some our sanity. We have not made this decision without much research and soulsearching. It would have been easy to follow the crowd and develop a Windows system, but we knew it never would have been as good as the system we developed. There are articles addressing this issue sprinkled throughout our web pages. If you want an OUTSTANDING product, the foundation must be stable. We wanted to give our customers an outstanding product. If those who question our judgment had done as much research as we have done, we believe that they would be questioning why they are using Windows when there are superior alternatives out there. So, where do we go from here? Well, we are in the early stages of developing a Linux-based OOPS!

In addition to our OOPS!® products, we have published a book, OBJECT REXX by EXAMPLE. Object REXX is an object-oriented programming language. If you would like to know more about our book, visit our Object REXX by Example web page by clicking: Book

We also have a Voice-activated database query package: V Trex Information . . . at your COMMAND! To find out more about V Trex, visit our V Trex web page at:
V Trex

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Why We Don't Write Windows Software
By Robert Mauro,
President of Cybercom

Note: This article first appeared in May 1997 issue of OS/2e-Zine.

We (Cybercom) have gotten numerous messages asking us our position on developing Windows software, about IBM and the OS/2 market. We hope to clarify our opinions on these matters and give you an idea of where we as a company are going as well.

Cybercom is a PC Software and hardware consulting company. We specialize in custom solutions as well as hardware upgrading, repair and system building. Our primary focus is a commercial software package called "AccuCount/2 -- an OS/2 only accounting and business management package.

During our development of AccuCount/2, we've learned a lot about the computer market. First, Windows users aren't quite the mindless lemmings many portray them to be. Many of them honestly do not know about OS/2, or the advantages it has over Windows. Second, many Windows users seem to be looking for solutions other than Windows, or better software for it.

Also, we do not believe the OS/2 market is dead, no matter how others portray it. We think most people just aren't aware of OS/2. I don't know how many times we have consulted with a client or potential client and suggested OS/2 and have been asked, "what's that? or, "does that run under Windows?"

Yet still, with all the doom-and-gloom out there, we have gotten requests for AccuCount for Windows. Our response. . . "Sorry, no."

To this reply and to our explanation why, we have actually found some Windows users ordering our software, and planning on dedicating a machine to OS/2 so they can run it.

Why won't we develop for Windows? Many reasons. One is that we don't believe Win95 is a viable platform for "Mission Critical" software, and we don't believe WinNT is up to par when it comes to performance/hardware ratios. The abysmal attempt to use NT on the MSNBC servers or PC Magazine's tests of Warp Server Single Processor against NT on 4 are perfect indications why.

What do we define as "Mission Critical"? Well, to us, "Mission Critical" is anything you run, anywhere you run it. In other words, when I get home from work, I play games or surf the web -- does that make it less "Mission Critical" for me? If you bought a new car, and it ran terribly, but you only used it for joyrides around the block, would that make the drive less "Mission Critical" (and excuse the breakdowns the car suffered from)?

Whether you are a home user, SOHO user or a Fortune 500 company, we think everything should be treated as "Mission Critical". To us, that alone discounts Win95 as a viable development platform. Even Microsoft claims if you need a "Mission Critical" platform you should use NT. To us, that is an admission of failure for Win95. It's akin to saying, "If you don't mind something that is buggy or poorly written, use Win95, otherwise use NT.

As for NT, MS still doesn't seem to know for sure what direction they are going today. Cairo is getting later by the year, and many promised innovations we keep reading about just never materialize except as another year appended to the product name that we never seem to see. We can't justify writing products for an inefficient OS whose feature are vaporous.

Well, what about a port? NO. One thing we feel about OS/2 and the OS/2 market is if we (the OS/2 community) are right (and I believe we are), and OS/2 is the best commercially available OS for the PC, then shouldn't we have the best software as well? There are some great companies out there -- like SPG (ColorWorks), SouthSide Software (PMMail), and The Keller Group (FaxWorks for OS/2) to name a few -- who seem to realize this and deliver top notch products that exemplify such a belief.

In developing AccuCount/2, we decided from the beginning that our software should also exemplify this belief. In (hopefully) following through on this belief, we are nearing our release date for a product that incorporates features that just aren't possible to implement on a platform like Win95. By "implement", we mean, "incorporate such features so that the features are usable and not a detriment to the speed and performance of the program or other simultaneously running programs".

Some of the areas we cite are multithreading and interprocess communication. "You can implement those under Win95!" some people tell us. Sure, with a lot of work, we can, producing a package that is very slow, hogs the system, and proves once again that Win95 doesn't multithread or multitask well. No thanks. We refuse to put our name on such a port and we refuse to let anyone else port our product and release such "crippleware".

Why don't we de-thread the program and/or remove the OS/2 specific features? Our plan and our company paradigm is to release state of the art software, with advanced features. Such a decision would not fit with that goal. That would just amount to releasing another version of everything else out there on the WinXX platforms.

So. . . How many times have you jumped off the bridge with Windows?