Software AG pays $26M for mainframe UI tools
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Software AG has bought the application modernization activities of Jacada, adding to its portfolio of tools for prolonging the life of mainframe applications by giving them a Web interface.The sale marks Jacada&#39;s move out of the application modernization and middleware software business in order to concentrate on development of call center systems.Software AG has bought the rights to Jacada&#39;s Terminal Emulator, Interface Server, and HostFuse products, among others. Jacada keeps its WorkSpace and WinFuse software, and rights to the Jacada brand.Eight of Jacada&#39;s research, development and support staff will join Software AG to maintain the application modernization products.Software AG will pay $26 million in cash for the business, which generates $12 million in annual revenue, it said Thursday.It will gain access to 200 of Jacada&#39;s 1,200 customers, mostly in the U.S., giving it a chance to expand its SOA (services-oriented architecture) work in an important market, it said.The deal is tiny compared to&#160;Software AG&#39;s purchase of U.S. software vendor webMethods: It paid $546 million for the SOA and business process management (BPM) company in June.Software AG is also looking to acquire other smaller companies or business units which could benefit from its global infrastructure. Earlier this year it paid $62 million for 80 percent of its Israeli distributor SPL Software.Also on Thursday, Jacada announced the appointment of a new CEO, Paul O&#39;Callaghan, from Jan. 1. President of the company since May 2006, he replaces Gideon Hollander, who will remain with the company as chairman.&#160;
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A new add-on for Office Project Server 2003 includes tools for connecting to HR software from SAP.
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(InfoWorld) - Software AG will adopt the webMethods name for its Crossvision range of SOA (services oriented architecture) products, executives said Friday, outlining how they will integrate staff and products following the company'sÂ acquisition of webMethods. To eliminate one of the few overlaps in their product lines, Software AG will adopt webMethods' BPM (business process management) offering, and stop selling Fujitsu's Interstage BPM software, which it has distributed since December 2004. However, Software AG will support its existing Interstage customers for at least five years, said Peter KÃ¼rpick, board member responsible for research and development. Another area of overlap is in SOA management and governance, where KÃ¼rpick expects to see Software AG's CentraSite SOA registry and repository combined with webMethods' recently acquired Infravio SOA governance tools by the end of the year. "We are strong in managing metadata, and they are strong in governance policies, rules and regulations," he said. The combined product will likely retain the CentraSite name, he said. All other areas of the companies' product lines are complementary, and there will be no need for customers to migrate, KÃ¼rpick said. KÃ¼rpick will lead the integration of the companies' product development teams, where he expects managers from both companies will take senior roles. It won't be like a classic merger where "you own the body but the head and legs are gone," he said. He sees little need for layoffs as the product development teams are combined: "We already have an R&D force that is 50 percent low-cost, mostly in India, some in Bulgaria, so we already have a good cost structure," he said. Although there may be little scope for payroll savings, CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich expects earnings to improve this year as the two sales forces -- which will remain separate at least through the end of 2007 -- exploit opportunities to cross-sell the two product ranges. The combined entity's revenue will grow organically by 10 percent over the next 12 to 15 months, he said.
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Microsoft Corp has signed a new 500m pound ($920m) contract to supply a desktop operating system and software to the UK&#39;s National Health Service, including provisions to develop a tailored interface for clinical systems.
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Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry will consider company's open-source desktop suite for future bids.
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Company hopes to attract users who will later upgrade to its small business software.
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Software giant says the final version will be available next year.
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OCTOBER 07, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Computer Associates International Inc. introduced a usage-based pricing and licensing option for its mainframe management products today, aligning its offerings with IBM&#39;s on-demand model.
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Key investments are starting to pay off for the enterprise software operator.
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German business software vendor SAP AG is rolling out a new version of its SAP Business One software with several functions designed for small and medium-size manufacturers.
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The US Air Force has awarded a $500m, six-year contract to Microsoft Corp and Dell Corp, to update and consolidate 38 software licenses across multiple sites on more than 525,000 machines.
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(InfoWorld) - In a move to strengthen its portfolio of analytic applications, SAP has agreed to acquire privately held Pilot Software, a maker of strategy management software based in Mountain View, California. SAP intends to integrate Pilot Software's core product, the business analytic application PilotWorks, into its suite of business software products that run on the NetWeaver integration platform, the Walldorf, Germany, company said Tuesday. No financial details were disclosed. In earlier interviews, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said the company would make "fill-in" acquisitions in areas where it needed to "generate innovative add-on products around ... core products." Kagermann said "analytic capabilities are part of end-to-end business processes" and referred to embedded analytics as "the future." The Pilotworks application provides analytic tools for executives to manage goals and initiatives more effectively and bring structure and consistency to regularly scheduled operational review processes.
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Mainframe products played a big role in BMC Software&#39;s second-quarter earnings for its fiscal year 2005, which ended Sept. 30.
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SAP America Inc. won a $35 million contract to replace the US Postal Service&#39;s 25-year-old human resources software. The contract covers $14 million in license and maintenance fees for the MySAP Business Suite
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(InfoWorld) - Software AG has built a global customer base over 35 years by being an early mover in a couple of major technology trends. The company introduced one of the first databases, Adabas, in the 1970s, a platform-independent computer language, Natural, in the 1980s and an XML (Extensible Markup Language) server, Tamino, in the 1990s. In an interview with IDG News Service, Peter KÃ¼rpick, member of the Software AG executive board responsible for research and development, talked aboutÂ the company's evolutionary moveÂ from XML servers and integration to new products and services needed to build an SOA (service oriented architecture) infrastructure. IDGNS: How did Software AG enter the middleware market? KÃ¼rpick: In the early 90s, our founder Peter Schnell realized a need to connect various systems so that information flows would not be confined to one system. He started a project, the message broker, which is known today as our enterprise service bus. This technology allows you to connect systems of different kinds to exchange information. IDGNS: And then the Internet came along. What happened then? KÃ¼rpick: In the mid-1990s when Internet gained momentum, Software AG detected a need for companies to standardize application tools. The standard was XML and became a core business. We tagged ourselves The XML Company. But that tag is going to disappear soon as XML is now pretty much a given in the industry; it's nothing special anymore. IDGNS: So if you're not going to be The XML Company any longer, what do you want to be? KÃ¼rpick: What we're doing now with SOA is a natural extension of what we've done for the last several years. SOA is a concept of loosely coupling systems and generating new applications based on highly standardized technologies, such as Web services and business process management. We've decided to bring a technology stack to the table that covers all the basic components of SOA. This includes opening up and connecting any kind of system. We have a toolset to connect to those systems. And once you've connected to three or four systems, you'll want to orchestrate a new process that takes data from system "a" to system "b" and beyond. This is where our enterprise service bus comes into play. IDGNS: How does AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) fit into this? KÃ¼rpick: We use this technology to develop enterprise screens, or "mashups," that companies can deploy on top of their systems to have an integrated view of data being generated by a variety of applications. This is what our crossvision suite is all about. IDGNS: How do you make customers understand what SOA is all about? KÃ¼rpick: We tell customers they need one central place, an SOA registry/repository. Here they register all their metadata, or SOA "artifacts," which describe interfaces, business processes, Web services and more. The repository is a library of sorts where users store all the ways they connect systems, providing a map of their IT landscape. It allows them to govern and manage their SOA infrastructure. IDGNS: So this is your interpretation of SOA -- to work through this repository? KÃ¼rpick: We say that an SOA registry/ repository is a must. It allows businesses to govern the life-cyle of SOA components, such as services, processes and policies. IDGNS: Is this repository approach unique to you? KÃ¼rpick: There are only two companies in world doing this right now: Software AG and Hewlett-Packard, via an acquisition.Â HP acquired Mercury Interactive, which owned Systinet -- the only competitor with a similar approach. IDGNS: Are there other interpretations of SOA with the library? KÃ¼rpick: You really can't run a large scale SOA landscape without a central library. As with any library, you need to know where the books are. With SOA, you need to know where all the services are you want to link and how to link them. IDGNS: And you help with your own proprietary technology? KÃ¼rpick: Our technology is entirely based on open standards. We see ourselves as a neutral player in the integration space. We're not biased toward SAP or Oracle or any other vendor of business applications for that matter. Our mission is to integrate heterogenous IT landscapes. Businesses prefer to enable new processes on what they already have. They don't want to embark on huge conversion programs. IDGNS: When companies follow a SOA path, do they need to invest heavily in consultants? KÃ¼rpick: They need some level of consultancy. SOA is a learning process. We can guide businesses and help them avoid interruptions. Our technology is based on standard ways of doing things -- for instance Eclipse as a development environment or Java as a standard way of developing code. Large companies can do much in-house. So it's really a question of how large you are and how much you want to do in-house. IDGNS: So no more XLM -- SOA is the future. But SOA can go away too, right? KÃ¼rpick: SOA is an architectural concept and I expect it will be around for at least the next 10 years or longer. The concept is really only at the beginning.
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InfoWorld - IBM Corp. is releasing more software to make it easier to program, manage and administer its mainframes in an ongoing bid to attract more customers to purchase its big iron hardware instead of high-end servers.
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Composite applications require user interface work in native language, company says.