Versata Inc. is moving its departmental business process automation suite into the enterprise.
Versata Logic Suite 5.5, which will be unveiled next week, provides four new areas of functionality to enable enterprise customers to specify business logic and integrate with third-party software when building Web-based applications.
Logic Suite delivers a visible specification of key business requirements, effectively replacing time intensive hand-coding efforts associated with J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and CORBA application servers, according to Versata officials, in Oakland, Calif.
In Version 5.5, Versata adds support for the latest versions of both IBMs WebSphere (4.0) and BEAs WebLogic (6.1) application servers.
Versata also enhanced its core Logic Server to support IBMs WebSphere 4.0 Application Development platform, which is now in beta testing.
In addition, Logic Suite 5.5 introduces a new kind of process logic that allows customers to specify logic that not only relates to the database, but also to point-in-time transactions. This means that IT managers can automate much more complex, cross-enterprise business logic, according to Versata officials. That core technology that enables this new capability, called a Process Knowledge Add On, was developed by Verve Inc., a company that Versata acquired late last year.
With the upgrade, Versata officials have implemented a fundamental shift in sales strategy. Previously the company provided a complete system that included pre-packed adapters to communicate to other systems. In accordance with the wider adoption of J2EE and Web services, Versata is now offering open source code tool kits along with consulting serviced to implement the technology rather than the pre-packaged adapters.
The tool kits should help companies better integrate Versatas technology with third-party offerings, at a much lower cost, according to officials.
Finally, with Logic Suite 5.5, Versata officials attacked the core question of how to best leverage IT resources including programming skills, hardware and performance requirements. Theyve beefed up the suite to provide better support for multi-developer projects and developer de-bugging tools.
