iE launches iE Integrator application server

Intelligent Environments Europe Ltd - Tuesday, November 17, 1998

New breed of web application server with universal connectivity promises to solve legacy integration problems and facilitate new system development.

iE has announced iE Integrator, a new breed of web application server positioned as a general-purpose integration platform for legacy and open systems, and as a development environment for next-generation "customer-facing" systems.

Roger Willcocks Managing Director of iE, said: "It is no longer enough to treat web development and platform integration as separate issues. When companies tackle one they almost invariably face the other. With iE Integrator we have solved the main system integration problems so our customers don't have to."

iE Integrator is built on a decade's experience of providing connectivity for legacy databases and applications, industrial-strength transaction processing systems and messaging systems, combined with new support for strategic object platforms. iE Integrator supports the broadest range of connectivity options of any product in the market, especially in the IBM and Digital large systems marketplace.

iE Integrator also provides a complete set of tools for building, running and managing web-enabled marketing, customer service and e-commerce applications.

Gary Barnet, an Analyst with consultancy OVUM, said: "In order to achieve the promise of network-centric computing large organisations must view their choice of technology as a strategic initiative and as a means to make their heterogeneous environments look like a single integrated whole. iE Integrator offers the broadest integration capability that I have seen to date and comes from a company with a proven track record in this arena."

Large IP service providers who provide value-added services offerings to their own customers have already identified iE as an important business partner. British Telecom and Ericsson are using iE Integrator to deliver network legacy and systems integration to corporate customers as part of wider service offerings.

David Osborne, Managing Director of NetSoft Solutions, specialist in insurance and finance Internet and connectivity solutions, said: "Legacy integration is a critical issue as insurers exploit the new, interconnected channel offered by the Internet. iE Integrator is best-of-breed technology that enables us to combine standard insurance system platforms with new web and object based delivery to exploit new routes to market, improve their service and reduce costs. I am very excited about iE's new products."

iE Integrator addresses three main requirements:

• Integration of multiple disparate platforms including mainframes, relational databases and corporate messaging systems.
• Development of new web-enabled and IP based applications with comprehensive connectivity to legacy applications and modern object services.
• Ongoing systems management and scaleability, enhancing Microsoft Windows NT's value as a strategic server platform.

iE Integrator already includes out-of-the-box support for strategic platforms and databases such as Sybase, Oracle, CICS, MQSeries and SYBASE and several terminal emulator types (3270, 5250, VT). With iE Integrator, iE has now added support for both the leading distributed object environments CORBA and DCOM, as well as high-level integration for Java, an emerging corporate platform for IP-based applications.

As with previous versions of iE Integrator, ease and speed of development are facilitated by a drag and drop programmers' interface. iE Integrator's native business-rules programming language has been replaced with the industry standard JavaScript, which allows disparate systems to be bolted together irrespective of the language used to create them, and exploits skills already in corporate and systems integrators' IT organisations.

iE Integrator also addresses system management issues with an integral management console enabling performance monitoring and capacity planning, and support for the LDAP network management protocol, enabling security and authorisation services.

Mike Warriner R&D Director of iE said: "iE Integrator has always catered to corporate requirements for rapid application development, legacy connectivity and systems integration. With iE Integrator we have extended these capabilities to encompass every major system platform and added a suite of powerful tools to address the key requirement for manageability. There is no shortage of products which solve one-off development and integration problems, but none of them offers the range and depth of iE Integrator."