Demo 2002 pushes serious software

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By Ephraim Schwartz

(IDG) -- Not as glamorous as wireless technology, enterprise software -- otherwise known as software for grownups -- will have its day in the sun at Demo 2002 in Phoenix this week.

And as Web services slowly penetrate the enterprise, Demo attendees will also see up close the first utilities to manage and monitor the reliability and performance of this new breed of corporate applications.

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The Infravio Web Services Platform will be unveiled at Demo. Using what Infravio executives call "an XML-centric view," the platform gives organizations a single point of command and a single model in the development of a Web service and uses that same model to both manage and execute the service.

"Web services can assemble themselves dynamically and may comprise assets that you don't own. It's like herding cats," said Rich Petersen, vice president of product marketing at Infravio, in Redwood City, California.

If users think herding cats is difficult, the task of ensuring that a Web service designed on one platform, such as Microsoft's .Net, will interoperate with another component developed on Java is equally daunting.

PushToTest, based in Campbell, California, believes its solution, called Load, is the answer.

Load features two unique testing components, one for the developer to test code before a service launches and a second that can be used by an IT manager after it launches to continuously monitor the SLA (service-level agreement).

"When you link a bunch of Web services together to make a system, how do you know which one isn't working properly? That is the problem we solve," said Frank Cohen, CEO and founder of PushToTest.

Developers are also finding as they move into production-level Web services that there are platform differences underlying SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) implementations. For example, when representing numbers, Microsoft's .Net can be taken out to 29 decimal places, whereas Java only goes to 18 decimal places.

PushToTest will check interoperability among the SOAP implementations.

Web services meet CRM in a big way when Salesforce.com launches its Enterprise Edition.

Upshot, based in Mountain View, California, will also unveil a unique sales-force CRM and marketing application that uses a centralized database and business intelligence to generate more focused sales leads while also using sales data to leverage more focused marketing campaigns.

The system will also prioritize leads based on business rules, route leads to sales staff, and send follow-up reports to sales staff.

An important enterprise need is to get information from one application to show up in another without a major EAI (enterprise application integration) implementation. AnySoft, based in Newton, Massachusetts, thinks it has the problem solved with its Digital Cortex Software Sequencing System. Company officials call it a "universal API" that solves a wide range of integration challenges between any Windows-viewable app.

Getting data from Great Plains (accounting software) into Siebel (a CRM application) and updating either application is possible by converting the UI, in this case Windows, into an API, according to Anysoft officials. The system can do bidirectional transactional processes as well.

In total, approximately 66 new products will be introduced at Demo 2002 this year.