The Hyderabad-based firm is on the verge of finalising a tie-up with an European information technology major which will take up the distribution and after sales support for the new product, VisualSoft CMD DVS Raju said. Refusing to divulge the European company's name, Raju, however, said the new tie-up will go beyond mere distribution and include development and value addition to the product unlike its association with the US-based Platinum Technologies for VisualShift.

VisualSoft is the first local company to launch a packaged software product in the US market with estimated sales touching one million units this month. The company expects to rake in between Rs 15 crore to Rs 20 crore from the product during its expected 15-month life span.

The success in American markets has opened doors for us andopportunity is coming knocking, Raju said adding The company will be a major force in the packaged software segment in the coming years.

While companies have been working towards providing Y2K solutions mostly on legacy-based systems, VisualShift is perhaps the first product which addresses the problem for a variety of desktop and client-server applications like spreadsheets, databases, visual basic programmes and others for PC users.

This perhaps explains the product's success considering it is directed towards the 60 million PCs used for business purposes across the world apart from the mainframe market. The two put together are estimated to provide a potential business worth $600 billion till the year 2000.

However, unlike the Y2K fix, the much smaller euro conversion market, put at $300 billion, is more complex and could need much greate services support. VisualSoft has developed a propreitory Euro Methodology for helping clients for smooth transformation of their business systems to comply with EMUstandards within the schedule and budgets. It has developed eight components and sold them to several European companies.