By William Fellows
Forte Software Inc believes its component development background puts it in the ideal position to deliver the key functions of application integration; tying together business processes. It claims that only itself and IBM are really in any position to solve e-business integration issues. It believes that moving messages around, adapters and connectors are basic infrastructure issues with little opportunity for differentiation. It’ll use whatever a customer prefers, MQSeries or other. For data transformation and routing – business process management – its uses New Era of Networks Inc programs.
Its says that its own component assembly products including Forte version 4, the XML-based Fusion EAI products including Conductor, and its forthcoming $200 SynerJ Java business process integration tool (for those who prefer Java over Forte 4GL) are the way that companies will be able integrate and extend applications. Forte moves the business process automation to Conductor so adapters don’t need to deal with business processes. Where there is no adapter, Forte supplies a toolkit with pre-built functions to reduce development time. Forte claims it already has 100 customers in production with Conductor.
Forte says Fusion generated $4.7m in its most recent quarter, up from the $3.5m it did on the suite in the first quarter of revenue ships. It believes it is now giving ‘traditional’ EAI shops Vitria Technology and Active Software a run for their money.
It agrees with recent research that EAI and application server technologies are going to come together. That process has become more obvious since customers have separated business logic from application logic and begun to leverage APIs to integrate business processes. The opportunity is that only around 1% of the EAI market is driven by products. The vast majority is hand coded work.
Forte says it’s average price point is now $35,000 to $40,000 for integrating an enterprise application, that’s down from the $75,000 price point its development environment used to start at. Forte claims ad hoc relationships with both EDS and Andersen Consulting and claims 150 Andersen consultants have now been trained in the use of Forte EAI products.
It believes that XML and Java will drive that integration given that 48 out of some 50 ERP vendors are now committed to XML. Forte can provide the application and integration services as well as third party Java application development environments where required. It thinks its development heritage has given it the kind of scalability skill-set required internet transaction processing applications and claims it has uniquely got its integration tools up on OS/390.
