ComponentSource Ltd has added what it claims are the market’s first off-the-shelf component libraries dedicated to customer relationship management functions to its 2,000-strong online catalog of Microsoft COM-compatible software components. The new ComponentBanker and ComponentInsurer objects come from Belgian developer, Business Architects, and are now set to feature in a new Microsoft Financial Components Inventory which ComponentSource will co-launch with the Redmond, Washington-based company in January.
Reading, UK-based ComponentSource claims the CRM market is ripe for exploitation by component authors, arguing that component based CRM development is substantially cheaper than buying packaged applications from the likes of Intentia or SAP, and certainly quicker and less expensive than developing a corporate CRM system from scratch in-house. In the case of the latest Business Architect components, developer licenses are $2,000 each, with run-time licenses likely to run to $45,000 per server, according to ComponentSource’s director of market development, Andrew King.
King claims there is now real momentum behind the market for the off-the-shelf Microsoft COM components, and notes that customers, particularly those from the banking and finance communities are becoming increasingly confident and sophisticated in their abilities to mix and match COM components from different authors. Today, he said, ComponentSource never has any face-to-face contact with something like 80% of our customers. Most sales are now done directly from the ComponentSource web site, where the new Business Architect software will be available from January.
Early last week, ComponentSource also announced its first set of Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) components, a set of 80 Beans sourced from Boston, Massachusetts-based The Theory Center, a company recently acquired by BEA Systems Inc for $100m (CI No 3,788). King said demand for EJB components is rising steadily and that, in the long-term, ComponentSource will work to offer customers as complete a choice of EJB components as it presently does for COM objects.
However, he added, as long as EJB components continue to require the provision of a an application server to sit between the EJBs and the operating system (unlike COM components which run directly against Windows NT), EJB growth may be constrained. It’s up to Sun to do something about that, King said.
