Santa Clara start-up Edify Corp, formed to develop intelligent data routing systems (CI No 1,855), has now announced its first product, the Edify Information Agent, claiming that it is the first intelligent, agent-based software system that retrieves, manipulates and delivers database, text and image information across data, electronic mail, facsimile and speech networks. The system is designed to automate information flows between an organisation and its information customers, defined as clients, distributors, vendors, sales force, and other employees. The software agents access and deliver information such as order, shipment status, product and financial data to these information customers either proactively or on request. It the agent processes associated with collection, processing, and distribution of information, making information immediately available to customers in the forms they require, 24 hours a day. The Edify Information Agent combines synergistic key technologies in software and hardware, including object-oriented programming, SQL databases, networking, data communications, and speech and telephony applications. The company is initially targeting the sales, service and support groups in high growth manufacturing and financial services companies and the product is in limited beta release at numerous high-growth product companies. The Information Agent consists of Agent Maker software running on the Agent Server, which is connected to data networks via local net and host gateways, and to telephony networks through standard analogue connections. Developed for non-programmers, Agent Maker is a code-free, point-and-click system for easy building and deploying of software agents to support information workflow applications. Users train software agents by choosing icons that depict human actions and matching them with other icons representing common office objects computer, phone, facsimile machine and so forth. Software agents, created and trained by Agent Maker, run on the Agent Server. The Agent Server is an 80486 system running OS/2 Extended Edition with its SQL relational database, and local network and host gateways to multiple information sources. The system can simultaneously access multiple host applications running on IBM Corp, Digital Equipment Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co hosts, network servers running NetWare and LAN Manager, and its own internal database. The Edify Agent Server internal relational database is extended to support image and speech files for storage of documents, forms and spoken prompts. The Edify Agent Server supports host-based Unix Mail, IBM Profs, DEC All-In-1, and HP Mail electronic mail systems, the company says, and gives no indication of how much it costs.
Impressive but pricey
However, Microbytes has been looking at the product and is impressed, although it describes it as pricey. It reckons that Edify regards the corporate data processing department with its huge programming backlogs and elaborate mainframe environments as its enemy, a bottleneck to producing more efficient software for sales support or customer service. The newswire has learned that the turnkey system starts at $60,000, including a custom-built 80486 machine and pre-loaded software modules. By plugging various boards into the 20-slot bus, users can add capabilities such as facsimile – via a GammaLink board, speech processing via a Natural Microsystems board, 3270 emulation, local network interfaces, and modems. All the hardware is accessed from Edify’s graphical Agent Maker development environment, which is written almost entirely in C++. Agent Maker is a breakthrough in ease-of-programming, Microbytes reckons, noting that it is based on a model that encompasses a flow-chart and a state machine, it lets you create vastly complex sequences of actions without writing a single line of code, using software like a spreadsheet, with rows and columns: in each cell, you place an action and an object chosen from the toolbar on the left – to send a document to the virtual fax, you pick those two icons
and put them together in a cell. The information sequences are compiled before they can be run, and data is stored locally in the OS/2 Extended Edition Data Base Manager.
