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.