Ravel Software Inc, a privately-held vendor of software tools and services from San Jose, California, has launched a tool for conversion of applications to accommodate the new unified European currency, the euro, which will come into existence at the beginning of next year. The company, which has until now been known mainly for its Y2K remediation tools, says it will initially be marketing the euro product, known as Unravel Euro, to its existing customers, which include a number of leading banks and financial institutions. Dr William Cureton, the main architect of the new tool, said it contains what he termed intelligent parsing techniques and carried out compliance identification and assessment of the problem, all of which is essentially the front end of the conversion operation. He added that the company intends to extend its initiall offering beyond the source code languages it currently works on, namely Oracle and three flavors of Cobol. The company enjoys a close relationship with Oracle, for whom it is a worldwide provider for Y2K solutions. As for the back end of the operation, ie the conversion solutions per se, Cureton said the company is still learning, adding that this part of the project may entail a partnership with another software house to create a truly ‘eurocentric’ life-cycle solution. The company was loath to expound who the prospective partner might be, but Ravel’s CEO Dave Ghosh did reveal that one of the companies with which it has an established relationship, Viasoft Corp, currently offers a back-end solution from Sopra Corp, making that company a possibility.
