EAI Vendor MITEM Integrates Legacy Systems With Siebel

Event Summary

MITEM Corporation, a company that describes itself as a provider of "legacy integration software for conducting real-time e-Business", today announced that the integration between its MitemView 5.3 and Siebel eBusiness Applications has been successfully validated by Siebel Systems. Siebel Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SEBL) is the world's leading provider of eBusiness applications software.

MitemView is a real-time, message-oriented integration system that is used to rapidly integrate Siebel eBusiness Applications with existing legacy systems. It combines a non-invasive message-processing engine with an event-driven application framework, and is engineered to maintain the performance and reliability of business-critical applications. With this integration, customers of Siebel Systems and MITEM can access information stored in legacy systems through Siebel eBusiness Applications, avoiding the need to display multiple windows from different data sources. The validated MitemView Connector allows Siebel eBusiness Applications to be integrated with a broad range of mainframe and mid-range systems without requiring changes or additions to those systems.

"Independently, MITEM and Siebel Systems are both leaders in their respective segments of the e-Business software market," explains Martin Fincham, vice president of marketing for MITEM Corporation. "Together, we offer our customers a pre-built product integration that enables faster system deployment at a lower cost of implementation. With its rigorous testing, this validation also acknowledges MitemView as a best-of-class solution for integrating Siebel eBusiness Applications with legacy systems."

"MITEM has shown commitment to the Siebel Validation Program by originally validating their solution with Siebel 99, and now also with Siebel 2000. Such commitment is characteristic of a company that shares Siebel Systems' focus on 100% customer satisfaction," said Michael Straub, director of Alliances Technical Services at Siebel Systems.

Market Impact

Over the last few years, there have been a number of integration vendors that have built "connectors" (interfaces, adapters, the terms are interchangeable), to leading business applications. Connectors to SAP, Siebel, and Microsoft are common examples. Some of the integration vendors have not taken the trouble (and major expense) to go through the process to achieve certification, since it doesn't necessarily provide additional sales, and still may not ensure that customers will get the results they expect. In the vendor's defense, many of these "certification programs" are exceptionally expensive and may add little incremental value to the perceived validity, or actual salability of the product.

User Recommendations

Customers involved in technology selections for application integration products involving leading software, including Siebel, SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Microsoft and other market leaders should consider the value of interface certification. Keep in mind that the lack of this certification does not prove, one way or the other, that the product will not function as well as the vendor describes it. Many vendors have shied away from the certification process and still produce fully functional and well-received products that interface properly with the underlying systems.

The most important thing is to speak with reference sites that have successfully integrated source and target systems using the "connector" which the vendor provides. It really is as simple as "either it works or it doesn't". An even stronger test is to find a reference site within the same vertical market as the prospective customer's.

In the final analysis, what really counts is how well the integration vendor's developers understood the application programming interface (API) provided by the source or target vendor (Siebel in this case). If they took the time to fully understand the ins and outs of "talking" to the system, the connector will function efficiently. The only way to determine just how well it works is to talk to other customers who have already implemented it.