Trilogy Development Group claims it will be the first to offer software based on Marimba Inc’s Castanet Bongo transmitter and tuner technology when it releases the 2.1 release of its Selling Chain software next quarter. The Austin, Texas-based company will offer a Castanet channel version of part of its Selling Chain software, which links various sales and marketing functions – front office action – and enables users to automate the whole sales process, the company claims. Selling Chain is used by the likes of Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp and Chrysler Corp, among others. The Castanet element means Trilogy’s customers will be able to receive software updates via the Internet and over intranets. These could be price changes or any other kind of sales information, or updates of the Selling Chain software. The Castanet-enabled Selling Chain is likely to be hosted initially on Marimba’s servers, but the company hopes eventually to strike an OEM deal with Marimba to offer it at a single price to its own customers. Marimba’s Castanet works by hosting so-called channels on a server, through which the Transmitter server sends down updates, which can be any kind of Java application, to clients running Tuner software. This runs the channels in the background so the channels can be updated without interrupting the other applications. Trilogy has also developed a component library using Bongo, Marimba’s visual tool. It’s for Selling Chain customers to build customized graphical user interfaces for configuring the SC Config business rules portion of the application. Alan Drummond, director of Trilogy’s Internet business group said the next libraries will help customers build quotes, and will be followed by applications dealing with tax and shipping.
