Inprise has started shipping its VisiBroker Integrated transaction Service (ITS), part of the application server it will release at the end of the year, but unlike some competitors has no plans to license Microsoft’s COM. Inprise’s ITS is designed to be used for building applications for distributed environments and supports both Java and C++. Inprise is not taking the same route as its close competitor, Iona Technologies Inc, which in January licensed Microsoft’s COM Component Object Technology. The Irish middleware vendor has integrated Microsoft’s Transaction Server technology with its own OrbixOTM object transaction manager. Inprise, however, will rely on Visual Edge Software Ltd, which has licensed COM on Unix for its COM to Corba ObjectBridge product. Inprise considered licensing DCOM, but, according to Brian Ledbetter, product manager for Western Europe, judged it not to be a cross platform technology and also less adapted than CORBA to Java.
