Candle Corp yesterday announced that Compaq Computer Corp has agreed to incorporate Candle’s Roma technology within the architecture of its NonStop eBusiness Integration Framework. Under the agreement, Compaq will port Candle’s Roma enterprise application integration (EAI) software to its Tru64 Unix, Windows NT/Alpha and OpenVMS platforms, and Candle has agreed to support BEA MessageQ (acquired from DEC in 1997 prior to latter’s acquisition by Compaq in 1998) within Roma. With BEA MessageQ support added, Roma gains the distinction of offering a bridgehead between IBM MQSeries, Microsoft MSMQ and now BEA.
Candle has been busily promoting Roma but Steve Craggs, VP of Candle’s EAI business, concedes that despite the company has only 40 customers for it worldwide. However, with Compaq’s $7bn services business pushing Roma as part of its enterprise scale e-business solution, this population seems sure to grow. Additionally, claims Craggs, as a near OEM agreement, Compaq’s choice of Roma could help Candle finally crack open the OEM opportunity which has so far largely eluded it, and attract further endorsements from other major systems integrators, such as Unisys, EDS and Andersen Consulting.
However, in the short-term it seems unlikely even Compaq’s endorsement will have any dramatic effect on Roma revenues. The technology has been made available to Compaq on favorable terms, and the latter’s NonStop ebusiness is in any case still a small portion of its systems integration business.
