Edition: U.S. / Global  Sound Bytes; Assembling a New Whole  By
Lawrence M. Fisher Published: May 1, 1994  WHY build a company
when it's faster to buy several and create a whole greater than
the sum of its parts? That's been the mission of Michael Fields,
a former executive of the Oracle Systems Corporation who set out
to create the first comprehensive management tools, for tasks
such as backing up data, security and archival storage, in the
uncharted realm of client-server computing. While commonly
available from large mainframe producers, such tools have been
lacking in client-server set-ups, which split tasks among more
than one computer on a network.  Armed with $35 million in
capital from Warburg Pincus, a New York venture capital firm,
Mr. Fields created the Open Visions Technologies Corporation by
acquiring nine companies or divisionsof companies, such as the
storage management division of the Control Data Corporation.
Open Vision also acquired five products or product families from
larger companies. L