Event
Summary
Among the attendees at Net Market Maker's Ground Zero conference in Boston
this May was a small software company whose product for extended supply
chain coordination has huge potential. Saltare.com will soon unveil LEAP!,
a Java-based, Internet application that works intimately with third party
enterprise software and legacy systems to help company's get the most
of their IT investments.
Founded in 1998 by operations research experts Cosimo Spera and Marco
Gagliardi, Saltare.com is just beginning to formulate its message for
the IT community. Part of its purpose at Ground Zero was to initiate partnerships
with Enterprise Application Integration and other enterprise software
vendors. LEAP! sits on top of any number of third party applications and
interacts with them through an EAI (enterprise application integration)
tool, to allow users to respond to important events in their supply chains
in real-time.
Initially, the company is concentrating its efforts on private B2B marketplaces,
enabling companies to collaborate with internal divisions and external
partners. It ultimately will target public marketplaces where potential
buyers can be relative strangers. LEAP! is designed to allow companies
to give participants of both marketplaces a certain degree of visibility
without compromising sensitive data. Two versions are available, a server
version and a web-based applet for partners who do not need the full-featured
product.
Market
Impact
Too often after completing an ERP or SCM system implementation, companies
find that the applications do not work well in concert with each other
and legacy systems. Although vendors have begun to offer messaging and
alert capabilities, these lack the ability to dip into other applications
to provide a comprehensive view of extended enterprises. Collectively,
multiple applications may support large parts of an organization's planning
infrastructure, but gaps that exist between applications can present a
barrier to communication. Saltare LEAP! claims to bridge these gaps with
a common user interface that provides visibility to conditions in different
systems and allows both internal and external users to respond to important
events in the supply chain. LEAP! is not an enterprise application integration
tool, but uses EAI software to interface to mission critical enterprise
applications.
LEAP! presents broad implications for the way organizations use the third
party applications it supports. In concept, LEAP! can determine which
supply chain events are important for users to act upon, potentially superseding
executive information summaries and problem windows offered by other applications.
While LEAP! is not intended to supplant them, some third party software
vendors may be reluctant to surrender this control over to Saltare.
The
introduction of LEAP! as a front end can also give partner vendors a scapegoat
for shortcomings or glitches caused by their software. To avoid this conflict,
Saltare should consider carefully its integration strategy to make sure
users can delineate between LEAP! and the applications it engages.
Saltare
should be careful not to offer too many concessions to software partners,
however. Like enterprise application integration (EAI) vendors, Saltare's
value proposition hinges on its ability to connect to as many different
software packages and databases as possible. A preferential relationship
or acquisition by another vendor would lead inevitably to restrictions
in compatibility.
User
Recommendations
At this point, Saltare is a development organization with a tantalizing
product and venture backing, but little in the way of sales and marketing
or services. LEAP! has one pilot installation and potential customers
should seek references at this site before acquiring the product for themselves.
We believe Saltare can grow dramatically if it can integrate LEAP! to
the leading third party software products, build a sales and marketing
organization, and communicate effectively its value proposition to IT
buyers of large corporations, who should benefit most from LEAP!'s capabilities.