Visigenic Software Inc has licensed Visual Edge Software Ltd’s bi-directional Corba-to-COM for use with its Corba 2.0-compliant VisiBroker 3.0 object request broker. Visigenic currently offers its own one-way Com-to-Corba bridge with older versions of VisiBroker. ObjectBridge enables Corba ORBs to communicate with Microsoft Corp ActiveX/COM (Common Object Model) objects and visa versa. Visigenic will ship the product in the first quarter of next year. Visigenic says its share price is down in the bargain basement because it’s still transitioning from being a database access company to an ORB house. It’s now referring database customers back to ODBC partner Intersolv Inc but is retaining its JDBC Java database connectivity tools. Visigenic says it expects to have made up ground on ORB market leader Iona Technologies Ltd when 1997 installations are tallied. Iona took 30% of the market in 1996 according to IDC, Visigenic had 11%. Visigenic says that’s hardly surprising given Iona was into the market three years before it. It says ORB sales represented $9.5m of its $17m 1996 revenue, but now account for 90% of sales. The company claims 45% of its ORB revenue came from end users in its second quarter ended September 30 compared with 20% in its June quarter. It told us it will soon announce new OEMs and is currently working on new kinds of Corba integration with OEM partner Netscape Communications Corp’s browser and server technologies. Other products in the runway include its own ORB-based transaction technology which dispenses with the requirement to have an OLTP monitor on the front-end. GUI-based ORB monitoring and management is in beta, new security features are due, plus an embedded product suite.
