Gartner and META Groups Position Compuware as a Leader in the Drive Towards Second Generation Client Server Computing; Analyst Reports Praise UNIFACE Six and EcoTOOLS

Business Wire, Jan 10, 1995

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 10, 1995-- According to recent reports by computer industry analyst firms Gartner Group and META Group, 1995 may be the year that client/server technology comes of age.

Reports from both firms favorably position Compuware Corp. (NASDAQ:CPWR) as delivering the tools needed to build and maintain enterprise-scale client/server applications -- addressing the need for complete application lifecycle solutions.

"Compuware has jumped into the leadership category through its acquisition of EcoSystems and Uniface," the Gartner Group writes in its September 30, 1994 report on the evolution and positioning of software vendors. These acquisitions are enabling Compuware to take the lead in providing businesses with "second generation" products for enterprise application development and automated operations management.

Both META Group and Gartner Group see the need for client/server technology to address the needs of large systems development. Currently, most vendors simply provide tools for building small-scale, departmental applications. But to meet the needs of enterprise-wide systems, vendors must provide customers with a new generation of client/server technologies for building, testing, deploying and maintaining applications throughout their lifecycle.

Making the Move from First Generation to Second Generation

According to Gartner Group, first generation application development required that application processing and presentation services reside on the client (the "fat client") and the database remains on a single server. While this approach worked well for small, departmental implementations, it still lacked functionality for enterprise-wide client/server systems.

Second generation tools like UNIFACE Six now use a balanced client/server approach or distributed function model. UNIFACE Six provides the ability to assign application processing evenly between the client and the server to optimize speed and performance and overcome the inefficiencies of first generation tools.

"We believe (Compuware's) UNIFACE will deliver on its ambitious technology promises, and become a strategic vendor of application development tools," states the META Group report of August 3, 1994. "Since today's development environment is inherently multivendor, Compuware/Uniface offers IT the ability to reduce the proliferation of competing/cooperating vendors."

META Group thinks that, with the introduction of the UNIFACE Six development environment, Compuware will compete aggressively in the second generation tools market, and that the product has already met two of the three criteria the group lists for building enterprise-scale applications: o

Application logic distribution between the client and the server (Distributed Function Model); o Three-tier architecture with support for multiple server in each tier and seamless access to legacy data; o Distributed systems management -- providing mainframe-like security an advanced trouble-shooting and team development.

"One-Stop" Shopping For Application Development and Systems Management

Compuware fulfills the last requirement of second generation client/server systems with the EcoSystems products -- tools for managing distributed systems and database applications that have been receiving praise of their own. "Compuware has made a strong play for king of enterprise systems management," according to Gartner Group's September 30, 1994 report.

Gartner Group believes that in order to be successful in distributed automation, a vendor must integrate technology from different sources and develop a global view of distributed resource management. The analyst group suggests that the problem with relational database management and administration tools is that they focus on just database systems or network management. EcoTOOLS addresses these need by providing management capabilities for all resources involved: the operating systems, networks, databases and applications. In their September 6, 1994 distributed automation report, Gartner Group predicts continued evolution of today's leading systems management tools. "We expect these products (especially EcoTOOLS from Compuware) to evolve into more general-purpose automated operations tools.

"We expect that by 1996, the leadership within the distributed automation segment of the systems management market will be divided among Compuware, Tivoli, Legent, Boole & Babbage and Hewlett-Packard," Gartner stated. "We expect a dominant player to emerge from within the ranks of those vendors in 1998."

"The needs of the enterprise go beyond simply developing the application. About 80 percent of the cost of running an application lies in deploying, administering and maintaining them throughout the entire lifecycle," said Anu Shukla, vice president of worldwide marketing for Compuware's Client/Server Systems Group. "The range of Compuware's client/server product offers which supports the entire application life cycle, is unique in the industry."