Although relative newcomers to the scene, Magic Software Enterprises Inc. and Pervasive Software Inc. are both trying to make a name for themselves with deeper integration offerings.
Magic is looking to expand its 2-year-old iBolt Integration Suite by providing vertical-market templates and capabilities for broad optimization—for example, in the area of supply chain optimization, officials said.
Along with an integration framework, Magics iBolt provides tools for business process modeling and business rules programming. Last month, Magic, of Irvine, Calif., added radio-frequency identification data integration capabilities to iBolt.
iBolt 2.0, expected in June, will provide native Java support, an XML component interface, enhanced visual design tools and server performance accelerators. Version 2.0 also will feature an XML mapping capability that supports XML-to-XML, database-to-XML and XML-to-database transformations.
iBolt user Keith Canniff said the most important aspect of iBolt 2.0 is the XML components. “You could possibly change the business rule on the fly and change the business process; as long as its in a flavor of XML [that iBolt] understands, you could augment the model as you go along,” said Canniff, vice president of product development at Management of Information Technologies Inc., in Norcross, Ga. “If thats not open, I dont know what is.”
Separately, Pervasive, of Austin, Texas, last week rolled out a set of data and application integration tools. The Pervasive Business Integrator, Data Integrator and Data Junction Migration Toolkit are designed to enable users to integrate, manage and analyze applications and data. The new tools—and Pervasives plunge into the integration market—are a result of the companys December acquisition of Data Junction Corp.
The Pervasive Business Integrator is used to integrate applications inside and outside an enterprise. The software provides graphical process flow design tools for creating workflows and document schemata design tools for creating message schemata.
The Data Integrator provides more than 150 data connectors for introspection and integration of data sources.
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