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Discusses the business status of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendors in 1999. Information on a Meta Group survey of ERP companies; Comments from Kevin McKay, chief executive officer and president of SAP America; Impact of the year 2000 date conversion problem (Y2K) in the industry's slowdown.

The article discusses the meaning and the use of cloud computing from the perspective of vendors, analysts and information technology (IT) customers. The "software as a service" (Saas) type of cloud computing is described as one that delivers a single application through a browser to multiple customers using a multi-tenant architecture. Utility computing is defined as something that enables providers to offer solutions that permit IT to create virtual datacenters from commodity servers. Managed service providers (MSP) is an application exposed to IT.

This article focuses on a service-oriented architecture platform designed to control services purchasing called Employee Business Services (EBS) developed by Rearden Commerce as of February 28, 2005. The product of Rearden executive Patrick Grady's singular vision, Rearden Commerce extends enterprise purchasing control to business services and sets a high-water mark for Internet applications with its unique SOA platform. Delivered through the browser, Rearden's EBS is capable of automating the purchase of many everyday services, including shipping, conferencing, meals, entertainment, and even travel. Yet Rearden's lineup of corporate customers is enough to make a believer out of anyone. Officially launching after five years in stealth mode, Rearden has already snagged Cingular, Genesys, JDS Uniphase, Motorola, Warner Home Video, and Whirlpool, all of which have signed up for enterprisewide deployments of EBS. This SaaS (software as a service) application goes where no enterprise software has gone before: to control spending on non-PO (purchase order) services, all according to identity-based business rules. Moreover, Rearden has partnered with American Express and Hewlett-Packard, which will resell EBS worldwide. INSET: Grady's Calculated Debut.

This article focuses on several integration tools for exposing mainframe-derived services. Presently, enterprises seem intent on disseminating the core business value that extols to a wider audience. As companies draw up plans for service-oriented architectures that treat applications as reusable services, mainframes promise to play a central role. However, the key is in selecting the right integration tools for exposing mainframe-derived services. One of the options is to deploy software that emulates a 3270 mainframe terminal and roll mainframe applications into Web applications. Fortunately, new tools from companies such as WRQ and NetManage are taking this approach to a new level. According to Benoit Lheureux, a Gartner research director, terminal emulation approach is mostly foolproof. In addition, he says that it is nonintrusive. The downsides are performance limitations and brittleness, for instance, if a mainframe application changes without warning, any application that depend on the 3270 connection break. WRQ's Verastream product is an example of how sophisticated the terminal-emulation approach can get. Although terminal emulation solutions may go as far as exposing 3270 streams as Web services, they are primarily designed for human interaction through a browser. INSET: Is It Time to Retire Big Iron?.

The article reports on the latest beta version of Office 2007 from Microsoft Corp. as of July 2006. The launching of the browser-based test drive of Office 2007 will allow users to experience the next version of Office online through Internet Explorer, without having to download beta software. It was learned that the new beta is a remote session connection, via Citrix, to Microsoft servers running the Office beta. According to Microsoft, the launch is an effort to avoid conflicts with Office documents already saved on a system.

The article reports that International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) introduced WebSphere software and services in the U.S. in April 2006 that are aimed to overcome barriers to the success of services-oriented architecture (SOA). According to IBM senior vice president and software group executive Steve Mills, such WebSphere releases will refocus the company for a world that is more process-led than technology-led. IBM unveiled eleven new products, twenty product enhancements, and eight service enhancements that are all focused on SOA process integration.

The article reports on the Office Live initiative introduced by Microsoft Corp. in the U.S. in February 2006. Dean Nicolls, senior product manager of information workers services at Microsoft, said that Office Live is aimed at U.S. business enterprises with less than ten employees. Office Live is providing such businesses with an all-in-one solution to create an online presence. Such presence ranges from creating a Web site to having company-branded electronic mail and Web site statistics, to having their own shared sites and online business applications in order to keep all their information in one place.

The article reports on the launch of the Siebel Component Assembly product by Siebel Systems for deployment on BEA WebLogic Server 9.0. The move by Siebel was prompted by the 2005 Analyst Summit held by SAP, where SAP described an initiative to componentize its applications as services running on the NetWeaver application server. Oracle and its Project Fusion, also headed in the same direction, want to become a common middleware infrastructure for its Oracle eBusiness, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards offerings.

Provides information on the launch of the forthcoming Longhorn version of Windows at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in October 2003. Features of Longhorn; Technology pillars of Longhorn; Applications of Longhorn.

The article reviews the voice over Internet protocol software Communications Enabled Business Processes from Avaya.

The article reports on application development tools for mainframes announced by IBM as of May 2006. The company is planning for the mainframe versions of its most popular enterprise software. Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive of the company's Software Group, mainframes are finding a second career as a hub for service-oriented architecture and other services. IBM unveiled new Rational development tools that generate Cobol code and yet cater to the style of Java and Visual Basic programmers.

The article reports on the acquisition of Fuego, a vendor of business process management (BPM) software, by BEA Systems as of March 2006. According to BEA CEO Alfred Chuang, the acquisition of Fuego will enable BEA's Aqua Logic line to offer a unified service oriented architecture-based platform via the graphical process modeling of Fuego's software. However, independent industry analyst Bruce Silver doubts that unification will happen. Yet, Silver acknowledges that the acquisition provides instant credibility to BEA in the BPM market.

The article reports on the release of the iWay Service Manager enterprise service bus (ESB) from iWay Software. iWay produces application adapters, those pieces of software that hook enterprise applications to middleware from the likes of BEA, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sonic, and Sun. Jake Freivald, vice president of product marketing for iWay, says that the catch-all ESB moniker has changed to mean middleware that offers transformations, intelligent message routing, distributed architecture, message transport, and support for standards.

The article reports on the decision of SOA Software to purchase technology from Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. in the form of Service-Oriented Legacy Architecture (SOLA). SOLA is an interface to CICS applications that runs on IBM mainframes and provides access to legacy data and business logic via standard Web services protocols. The company purchase the software because it recognized that Merrill had a robust, battle-based solution. Merrill chief technology architect Andrew Brown oversaw the development of SOLA which is known internally as X4ML. The SOLA will be available in January 2005.

This article focuses on the launch by Microsoft Corp. of its WinFS beta in the U.S. in September 2005. WinFS was one of the three pillars of the company's next-generation version of Windows announced two years ago, then code-named Longhorn and now morphed and downsized into Vista. Microsoft developers were happy to discover that WinFS beta really does install on Windows XP and includes an array of supporting development tools. The beta release of WinFS is a small milestone in a grand experiment on the part of Microsoft, which is to detach desktop data from its rigid hierarchy and enable users to create new, more intuitive information relationships. Now that the code has arrived, developers can start prototyping applications for themselves and get a feel for what the new era will bring.

The article focuses on the package flow initiative system of UPS Worldwide Logistics Inc. Beginning in 2007 when the new system will be fully deployed, increases in operational efficiency are expected to save UPS that $600 million each year, according to Cathy Callagee, operations portfolio manager at UPS. The improved end-to-end flow, which will ultimately be used by more than 100,000 employees, begins when the customer generates a smart label using a Web application that transmits customer and package information to UPS and preprocesses it before the driver arrives for pickup. That information then passes to UPS' Dispatch Planning System which charts UPS truck pickup and delivery routes. 93 percent of UPS packages have smart labels. At the package center, the smart label information is validated, at which point the system spits out another label, dubbed the preload assist label or PAL, to help human loaders route the package to the correct conveyor belt and place it an optimal position on the delivery truck. The package flow software was developed in-house using COM+ components written in C, C++ and Visual Basic running on Windows 2000 Server. SQL Server maintains the planning, real-time sort and post-sort reporting databases.

This article features several developers of middleware for the mainframe in the U.S. The rule-processing engine behind Attachmate's myEXTRA tools allows developers to create Web-based presentations that restructure the user interfaces of legacy applications. The company also offers managed terminal emulation software, as well as a range of data, screen, and transaction adapters that include bi-directional exchange of events with the mainframe. The Attunity Connect data access software exposes legacy data as a virtual database, allowing Structured Query Language access even to non-relational data via industry-standard developer application program interfaces. MQSeries was the first middleware to run on mainframes. Dubbed as WebSphere MQ, this line of software includes a wide range of workflow tools as well as business process management and development software. In addition to a line of high-performance drivers for the major relational databases, DataDirect offers SequeLink for zOS, an end-to-end middleware interface for the larger version of IBM DB2. Often used in conjunction with BizTalk Server, Microsoft's Host Integration Server 2000 connects with IBM mainframes and other legacy systems.

This article discusses a decision by IBM to add support for open document format (ODF) in its Workplace Managed Client 2.6 software, as of December 2005. The product will join other ODF-supporting software from OpenOffice.org and Sun Microsystems. Microsoft Office may be the undisputed leader in productivity software, but that balance is threatening to shift. Countries with emerging economies have welcomed open formats for documents and software. ODF supporters, including IBM and Sun, have started mobilizing a global effort to push ODF as a global standard format for documents.