Information M.
Reed
- March
6, 2001
Event
Summary
Information Builders (IBI, privately held) has announced
plans to spin off its middleware technology group (which develops and
supports the EDA middleware product) into a new wholly owned subsidiary
named iWay Software. The move is designed to allow Information
Builders (IBI) to concentrate on the WebFocus and Focus
business intelligence products, while allowing iWay to handle e-business
integration using its suite of iWay software products (many based on EDA
technology) and other former IBI offerings, including the SmartMart data
warehousing suite.
According
to Gerald Cohen, CEO of both Information Builders and iWay Software, "We
carefully considered all our options for effectively supporting and growing
our business intelligence and integration product lines before we entered
into this milestone decision. Establishing a subsidiary will not only
streamline Information Builders' ability to respond to the needs of its
customers, but it will also give us an opportunity to brand our multiple
product lines more effectively, thereby maximizing efficiency in the marketplace."
President
John Senor, formerly vice president and general manager of the middleware
product line and founder of the EDA division, will lead the new company,
which is comprised of Information Builders' former Middleware Technology
Group. The new company will focus on delivering rapid e-business integration
solutions built on its newly announced suite of enterprise integration
products. "As a part of Information Builders, we delivered rock-solid
technologies that could integrate information from over 120 different
sources and operating environments. This includes all legacy data, relational
databases, ERP, and application products," said Senor. "That capability
is critical for e-business, because e-business requires comprehensive
access to all information assets in the enterprise."
Market
Impact
iWay
Software hits the ground running with more than 25 technology and services
partners, including IBM, Oracle, NEON (New Era of
Networks, not NEON Systems), i2 Technologies, Informix
and others, who are participating in a variety of cross-licensing, co-marketing,
and OEM agreements. Other vendors in this market space will have to make
sure that they keep up with iWay, since the new spin-off starts out with
an established customer base (from the EDA product, which has been on
the market for ten years), name recognition in accounts (particularly
due to the Focus products), existing agreements with partners, and an
already-trained consulting staff.
As
noted in many previous TEC articles, e-Business Integration is definitely
the hot area at the moment. It is critical to firms attempting to integrate
legacy data into web platforms, especially for access to historical data
used in customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management
(SCM) applications. EAI, or enterprise application integration, is the
term commonly applied to this type of application, and it is clearly not
a passing fad. Companies are rushing madly to "webify" their applications,
and any software product that speeds implementation time and/or allows
access to a "difficult" data source will have a leg up on the competition.
User
Recommendations
Potential customers for EAI-type products should carefully examine the
range of data sources that will have to be accessed to populate a web
application, both now and in the near future. The vendor chosen would
have to supply native interfaces (where possible) to the required data
sources, and a fairly easy way to convert data out of sources which have
no published API. Both reading and writing data should be supported for
each source. In the case of mainframe data, it is preferable that the
product(s) chosen not require a gateway for access. In addition, strong
built-in support for XML must be supplied. Speed of solution implementation
should be a key differentiator of the chosen software, since everyone
has found out that the web moves in real-time. You either keep up or get
out of the way.
A
long list of potential vendors could include IBI, IBM, ETI, Informix,
Informatica, NEON Systems, Oracle, WebMethods,
Tibco, BEA Systems, and others.