Vision Software Tools Inc is preparing to announce that its JADE Business Logic Server will interoperate with IBM middleware and messaging tools, including DB2 Connect, MQSeries and WebSphere Application Server Enterprise System. What we make is an e- business automation system, explains VP of marketing Mike DeVries. It lets businesses build deploy and change applications using business rules automation. Esoteric as it may sound, the software has won 120 new customer sites for Vision.
This announcement represents a major new product release of Vision Jade. As well as enterprise messaging courtesy of Big Blue, Jade 4.1 adds an HTML user interface, a Java servlet engine and integration with Macromedia’s web design category-killer, Dreamweaver, at front end. Web site designers are free to use FrontPage, PageMill or even NotePad if they so choose, but Vision has decided to bundle Dreamweaver with Jade at no extra cost. We’ve found through market research that Dreamweaver just does a better job, says DeVries.
Nothing else comes cheap, however. Our average deal is north of $100,000, says DeVries, we’re selling at the enterprise level. The server is priced at $25,000 per CPU; developer licenses cost $3000 per seat. While DeVries says Jade doesn’t have any direct competition, he admits that his bids for business most often run into rivals from Silverstream and NetDynamics. But, he says, we beat both on time to market and flexibility, and on level of skill required to build applications.
So where’s the XML support? We’re actively working to move the development repository and GUI to XML, says DeVries. Just last week at Spring Internet World, both Oracle and IBM announced XML- based business-to-business e-commerce infrastructures (CI No 3,640). DeVries says he’s not worried. Neither of those technologies have business rules, he points out, that’s where our unique edge will be. á
