Sam Ellis is worried. As president and CEO of Forward Software, Sam introduced a new spreadsheet product, Cinco, to the market last year. Forward Software has been developing and marketing high-quality software packages for more than five years, but these products are mostly computer software language interpreters, similar to Pascal, FORTRAN, and C. These products received excellent critical reviews, and because of Forward's aggressive pricing and marketing, the company quickly captured a major share of that software market. Buoyed by its wide acceptance, last year Forward decided to enter the applications arena for the IBM and compatible audience, leading off with Cinco and following up with a word-processing application, Fast.

The spreadsheet market is dominated by Focus Software, whose product-Focus A-B-C-has an 80% market share. Focus A-B-C was released in 1981, shortly after the IBM PC was introduced, and the two products had an immediate symbiotic effect. The spreadsheet was a major advance over what was available at the time but required the extra 16-bit processing power that the IBM PC offered. IBM, on the other hand, needed an application that would make its PC a "must buy." Sales of Focus A-B-C and the IBM PC took off as a result of their near-simultaneous release.

At the time of its release, Focus A-B-C was a superb product, but it did have flaws. For example, because the software was copy-protected, it could be installed on a hard disk, but the original floppy disk had to be inserted each time before the software could run. Many users found this step an annoyance. Another problem with A-B-C was printing graphs. To print a graph, users had to exit the software and load a new program, called Printgraf, which would then print the graph. Finally, the product had a list price of $495, and the best discounted price available was approximately $300.

However, Focus A-B-C had a unique menu system that was intuitive and easy to use. Pressing the slash key (/) displayed the menu system at the top of the spreadsheet. The menu allowed the user to make choices and provided a one-line explanation of each menu option. Compared to the cryptic commands or keystrokes users had to enter in other products, the Focus A-B-C menu system was a model of simplicity and clarity. Millions of users became accustomed to the menu system and hailed its use.

Another advantage of Focus A-B-C was its ability to let users write their own macros. Literally a program, a macro allowed a user to automate spreadsheet tasks and then run them with a keystroke or two.

In 1985, a small company named Discount Software introduced its own spreadsheet to the market. Called VIP Scheduler, the product looked and worked exactly the same as Focus A-B-C. Pressing the slash key displayed the identical menu as found in Focus A-B-C, and the product could read any macros developed with Focus A-B-C. VIP Scheduler was designed to look and work exactly as Focus A-B-C so that users would not have to learn a new system and could start productive work immediately. VIP Scheduler also offered two advantages over Focus A-B-C: its list price was $99, and the software was not copy protected. Sales for VIP Scheduler were strong, but many consumers, perhaps feeling safer with the Focus name, did not buy the product, even though critical reviews were positive. VIP Scheduler did find a receptive market in academia?