Guild Companies

Windows & Linux Edition
Volume 2, Number 7 -- February 19, 2003

But Wait, There's More. . .

Microsoft last week sketched out its roadmap for its Visual Studio application development tools at the VSLive 2003 developer show in San Francisco. As we all know, the "Everett" release of Visual Studio.NET 2003 (which is code-named after the town in Washington State near Puget Sound where the Boeing plant is located) is due to ship in April with the "Whistler" release of the Windows server platform, which is now called Windows 2003 Server after many name changes. Everett will exploit the XML and Web services capabilities of Windows 2003, the very heart of the .NET idea. According to Microsoft, the future "Whidbey" release of Visual Studio.NET (named after an island in Puget Sound) will allow queries of the future "Yukon" SQL Server database in Microsoft's own Common Language Runtime environment, which in turn supports a boatload of different languages. Apparently, CLR will also be embedded within Yukon itself, perhaps being used as a database trigger language or s stored procedure, for instance. This is all done in SQL today, and not everyone is an SQL programmer or, more importantly, wants to use SQL, which can be a resource hog, when a more efficient language is available. Whidbey will ship sometime in 2004, around the same time as Yukon, which will store data in a native XML format that is more flexible than the relational database format used in the current SQL Server database.

It doesn't hurt to ask, we suppose. Microsoft has applied for patents that cover some of the core technologies that the company has developed as part of its .NET Web services initiative. Microsoft has apparently applied for several patents relating to .NET in 2002, but is only just now disclosing this information. If Microsoft controls the APIs to .NET through patents, it will be able to dictate terms to any other software company that wants to weave itself into .NET from the outside. Considering that .NET itself leverages a lot of open standard XML technology, it will be interesting to see what the U.S. Patent Office does with this one. Microsoft has been mum on what it hopes to do with the patents, and to further complicate matters, has offered some .NET components as open source standards through the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA).
IBM last week announced the availability of beta versions of DB2 Information Integrator and DB2 Information Integrator for Content, the first two products to come out of its new Xperanto data management and integration project. IBM says the software promotes a "federated" data architecture that lets organizations view data from various sources, if they were located in the same place, thus reducing the time and cost associated with integrating diverse data environments. IBM says the software features the "broadest support for open standards," and with support for various data types, such as XML, e-mail, multimedia, Web services, life sciences, competitive data sources such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases. IBM sees various uses of the software, such as a call center that needs to pull customer data from various structured and unstructured sources into a new CRM application, or a bank that wants to tie customer records to investment information from the Internet.
Information Builders last week launched the Version 5 release of WebFOCUS, its Java servlet-based business intelligence solution that can be deployed from OS/400, z/OS, Unix, Linux, and Windows servers. WebFOCUS delivers an integrated set of programs that tackle different parts of the business intelligence software equation, including extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) tools, ad hoc query and OLAP components, direct integration to Java-based portals, and enterprise reporting tools. All told, Information Builders counts 450 improvements in WebFOCUS 5.0, including the ability to deliver business intelligence as a J2EE and Microsoft .NET Web service; new report delivery and archive techniques; "closed loop" business intelligence for direct integration to transactions and data; improved financial reporting capabilities; and new power user features for delivering OLAP access via thin-clients throughout the enterprise. Organizations using WebFOCUS include Ford, NASA, the Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting System, and WEBCOURT, a Web-enabled small claims civil court in Los Angeles.
EXE Technologies filed an 11-count lawsuit against its archrival in the supply chain management software space, Manhattan Associates, and three former EXE employees. Manhattan Associates misappropriated proprietary EXE information in the pursuit of unfair and anticompetitive business practices against EXE, alleges EXE, which is based in Dallas and filed its lawsuit there. EXE will seek a trial by jury and will ask for unspecified punitive and compensatory damages. EXE could not be reached for comment at press time, and it was unknown whether the former EXE workers were, or still are, in the employ of Manhattan. EXE was the top-dog of the supply chain management space during the historical economic run-up of the late 1990s and 2000. However, the company misfired, and Manhattan Associates is today recognized as the kingpin of the pure-play supply chain management vendors. Manhattan, which announced its 2002 fiscal year results last week, did not immediately respond publicly to the suit. The Atlanta company announced total revenues increased by 13 percent to a record $175.7 million for the fiscal year ending December 31. EXE, which announced its fiscal year 2002 results last month, reported a 24 percent decline in total revenues to $74 million. EXE Joe Cowan, who joined EXE in November, said he expects to complete EXE's restructuring by the end of the first quarter and return the company to profitability this year.
Document management looks to be one of the few bright spots in an otherwise gray outlook for the IT marketplace. Last week Nucleus Research, the young analyst group that gained the ire of software vendors like Siebel Systems and i2 Technologies for unflattering reviews of poor return on investment (ROI) for customers, reported that 83 percent of companies implementing document management technologies feel they have gotten their ROI. More specifically, search functionality was found to have contributed to positive productivity in 86 percent of the participants, and 91 percent of the participants found version control to be similarly beneficial. Regarding document retrieval, the average participant reduced retrieval time by 52 percent through their DM solution, Nucleus says. The document management study began in November of last year and involved conducting interviews with 30 users of document management solutions from Documentum, OpenText, FileNET, and Hummingbird, none of whom had any hand in participating or sponsoring the study, Nucleus says. The study is the first in a series of benchmark studies that Nucleus will be conducting to gauge the ROI that companies report for several different types of technologies. Nucleus Research was founded in 2000 by former members of IDC, Gartner Dataquest, and AMR Research, and is headquartered in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
California Software last week announced the version 6.5 release of its Loan Production System (LPS). The company says that new features in LPS 6.5 include absolute operating system and database independence. In addition to running the LPS system on OS/400, Windows, Unix, or Linux operating systems, the software will work with IBM's DB2 and Oracle's database software. Last October, the Irvine, California, software company announced that it has migrated its LPS product to the Microsoft Windows operating system using its Baby/iSeries migration tool. California Software offers different versions of its core LPS product for automotive, consumer, mortgage, and delinquent loans. The company acquired the developer of the LPS line, ALE Systems, in 2000. For more on California Software's LPS products, go to www.alesystems.com.
Sterling Commerce had excellent fourth-quarter 2002 sales of its Unix-based integration product, the Gentran Integration Suite, and as a result it will continue to drive momentum in 2003 by porting the software to Windows, OS/400, and OS/390, the Columbus, Ohio, company said last week. The Gentran Integration Suite provides an integration broker architecture that acts as a data type mediator among disparate applications, including support for XML, Web services protocols, and the range of enterprise adapters and connectors from iWay Software (an Information Builders company). The Gentran Integration Suite builds on top of Sterling's core EDI product, Gentran, by allowing users to incrementally attach additional components that provide B2B, EAI, and Web-enablement capabilities. Sterling planned to start shipping the Windows version of the Gentran Integration Suite on January 31, with OS/400 and OS/390 versions coming later this year.