Forte Launches Integration Tool, Demonstrates Java

Computergram International, May 11, 1999

Forte Software Inc effectively relaunched itself yesterday as an application integration and Java/internet tools developer. While the company has already been talking about its aspirations in the application integration space (CI No 3,627), and claims to have generated $3.5m in revenues from eight customers already, it chose its annual Developer Forum in San Francisco to launch the two new tools on which it is basing its future. Forte Fusion, which began shipping in March, is the enterprise application integration tool, based on XML. SynerJ, which will support Sun Microsystems Inc's Java2 Enterprise Edition (due to be launched at the Java One show in San Francisco next month) is out in a beta version and is expected to ship in the fall. President and CEO Marty Sprinzen admitted that the company's traditional high-end proprietary development systems market had "gone rather flat" as corporates struggled with massive ERP installations and worried over Y2K.

Fusion separates business process automation logic, or process flow, from the integration logic, such as the data conversion and application interfacing. It consists of four main components: data integration and messaging, packaged pre-built adapters, the XML-based Fusion Backbone, and Forte Conductor, the business process automation engine. Conductor keeps a track of business functions, which can be reused. Below that is the integration layer, and below that again are the "very thin" application adapters. Forte has written some of the earliest adapters, including a set for SAP AG's R/3, but says once application vendors adopt XML and the XSL extensible stylesheet language as a standard information exchange mechanism, it won't need to write further adapters.

SynerJ includes SynerJ Developer, a standard IDE; the SynerJ Server Application Server component, including load balancing and dynamic monitoring; and Deployer, Forte's partitioning system, which keeps a track of and automates coding changes needed for the code to run on different platforms, generating working applications optimized for each environment. SynerJ interchanges standard Java source and binary components, and integrates other components and Forte Fusion through XML/XSL, Corba/IIOP and HTTP/HTML. The three parts of the system will be available separately, at prices "under a thousand dollars", says Forte.

Forte still intends to launch Release 4 of its full-blown application environment some time next year, which will incorporate the new products into a fully integrated system.