Unify Introduces Industry's First 'Application Integration Server' to
Bridge Legacy, Custom-Built, Packaged Apps With Internet, Enabling
Centralized Customer Service
Built-in Application Services Provide Seamless Integration With All
Applications Throughout the Enterprise; Application Management Service
Lowers Cost of Ownership and Manages Complexity; Universal Client
Support Enables Customers to Access Any Application, Anywhere, Anytime
SAN JOSE, Calif., May 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Unify Corporation (Nasdaq: UNFY
- news) today made a strong bid in the heated application server market
with a first-of-its-kind, enterprise-class ''application integration
server,'' specifically targeted to help large companies improve their
customer service by giving their customers a single point of contact for
all of their product and service needs -- from any client platform they
choose to use, including Internet-based Web browsers. Unify's new VISION
AppServer is designed to rapidly and economically integrate legacy
applications, packaged and custom applications, and the myriad of
databases that contain customer information throughout the enterprise,
''American Skiing Company [NYSE:SKI - news] has become the largest ski
resort operator in the U.S. because we emphasize exceptional customer
service'', said Scott Mills, Corporate Director of Information Systems,
American Skiing. ''Unify's VISION has helped us grow by tightly
integrating and leveraging our customer information and support systems
from lift-ticket sales and ski rentals to lodge accommodations. Now
we're targeting more new skiers and snowboarders as well as
international visitors. We'll use the new Unify VISION AppServer and
AppBuilder products to quickly build and integrate Internet capabilities
to reach those markets, while expanding our current customer service
systems. We'll be counting on Unify's reliability and scalability as we
continue growing this company.''
To provide broad and seamless integration with back-end legacy data and
packaged applications, Unify VISION AppServer includes built-in support
for IBM's industry-standard MQSeries messaging technology. On the
client-side, Unify VISION AppServer provides universal access so that
any customer running on any system gets the information they need
through a web browser running HTML or Java(TM), ActiveX or CORBA
applications.
Unify VISION AppServer is an open, standards-based environment that can
simply be deployed into virtually any enterprise environment with no
modifications. Unify VISION AppServer was not designed to replace
systems, but rather to quickly, easily and centrally coordinate and
manage the required business components or services necessary to deliver
applications that integrate any existing systems and information sources
to serve customer service requirements.
''A huge frustration for many customer-driven organizations today is
their inability to easily access information trapped within corporate
walls,'' said Reza Mikailli, CEO of Unify Corporation. ''Many IT
organizations struggle to free this information by linking disparate
applications and databases across departments. But traditional
approaches just aren't viable any longer, given the rate of change in
businesses -- the problem has become too complex, training cycles are
too long, and business needs keep evolving. Other application servers
now on the market can help in one area or another, but none of them can
address the whole integration problem. With Unify VISION AppServer, we
offer IT departments the first comprehensive solution for application
integration and deployment.''
Built-in Business Component Framework Reduces Time to Market
The development environment for Unify VISION AppServer is Unify VISION
AppBuilder, an advanced component framework that enables IT
organizations to rapidly create and easily modify server-based business
components to support customer service applications. Unify VISION
AppBuilder was designed to shield developers from the complexities of
the underlying technology, enabling them to focus on the business
components and business processes that make up the heart of their
applications.
Unify VISION AppBuilder contains many powerful, pre-built classes for
constructing server-based business components. For example, a service
class is provided that automatically enables a business component to
communicate with other applications and services independent of the
underlying network. Interfaces to applications services are
automatically generated without the need for developers to define and
maintain custom-built, proprietary code, Developers simply need to focus
on business logic; all of the various system-level issues, including
operating systems, networks, transactional logic and data management are
already built into the application server.
Central control and management functions enable server components to be
accessed by all clients universally, while also providing connectivity
to the data sources and customs legacy, and packaged applications
throughout the enterprise.
''Future-Proofed'' Architecture Adapts to Technology Changes
In addition to supporting components developed in C, C++, and Java,
Unify VISION AppBuilder provides a high-level business language that
allows developers to focus on defining business rules rather than on the
complex, underlying technologies. The business language abstracts the
actions of distributed computing as well as databases, operating
systems, and user interfaces. The high-level programming paradigm allows
complex business components to be developed and deployed using
dramatically fewer lines of code, resulting in higher quality
applications and faster time to market. Unify VISION AppServer's
dynamic, scaleable architecture enables applications built today to
adapt to new technologies and changing enterprises of tomorrow.
Most other offerings in the web application server market are built
around a client-centric architecture, forcing IT organizations to
develop or deploy low-level middleware functions. Unify VISION AppServer
is based on a unique, scaleable, server-centric architecture delivering
comprehensive application and middleware services. This eliminates the
need for an IT organization's scarce resources to deal with the
complexities of middleware and application integration.
''The laboratory information systems that we build are used by hospitals
and clinics where patients lives can depend on the right person getting
the right information at the right time,'' said Lee Green, Chairman and
CEO, Triple G Corporation. ''Applications we've created with Unify's
VISION give medical professionals the universal access, reliability and
quality they demand. Unify's scalability and security features have been
vital as well to an industry so caught up in mergers and consolidations.
Triple G is looking forward to using Unify's newest products, Unify
VISION AppServer and AppBuilder, to help us develop and integrate
expanded capabilities into our products, including innovative Internet
applications integrated into existing systems, to serve our global
market.
_Seamless Integration With Legacy and Packaged Applications Leverages
_Existing Investment
_To provide comprehensive system integration, Unify VISION AppServer
coordinates business services across disparate applications, protocols
and
databases. At each level of integration, Unify supports key industry
standards that help orchestrate users and resources across the network,
Unify VISION AppServer allows business components to be developed that
leverage and integrate with existing legacy applications seamlessly. For
example, Unify VISION AppServer utilizes IBM's industry-standard
MQSeries messaging technology to perform integration with a broad set of
solutions including legacy IMS and CICS applications, IBM AS/400-based
application packages, and ERP packages such as SAP R/3. Any
MQSeries-accessible application can be easily integrated into
application services, allowing immediate access to those systems
throughout the rest of the enterprise. The integration can be performed
without modification to the existing legacy system code.
''We see a high demand for a new generation of e-business applications
that require seamless integration of applications, data, and systems for
a wide variety of users,'' said Colin Osborne, MQSeries Business
Manager, IBM. ''MQSeries provides the glue for connecting the various
legacy systems, data, and applications to Unify VISON AppServer, which
delivers scalability, reliability, and performance. These products offer
customers the ability to take advantage of existing investments and to
integrate new technologies that deliver cost-effective solutions. The
relationship we have with Unify ensures a tight and feature rich product
integration, and a high level of support for our mutual customers.''
Built-in Application-Management Lowers Cost of Operations
Reconfiguration and modifications to underlying systems, applications,
and network topologies is common as business needs change. Unify VISION
AppServer provides easy, centralized administration and management of
all services network-wide from a central management console. The central
console allows operators to view the configuration of every application
server on the network as well as dynamically start, stop, and manage
services on those servers,
In addition, Unify VISION AppServer delivers built-in application
instrumentation integrated with industry-standard management platforms,
enabling application management from a central management console
including transaction monitoring, performance monitoring, event
management and software distribution.
Dynamic Scaleable Services Provide High Availability
Unify VISION AppServer delivers a high level of availability and
scalability, offering sophisticated replication, load balancing,
fail-over, and publish-and-subscribe capabilities, all based on a high
performance, fully asynchronous messaging architecture,
Unify VISION AppServer employs dynamic binding and distributed name
services, allowing application services to be located, added, and moved
to any server without requiring reconfiguration of any kind. Application
services can be replicated within and across platforms, increasing
application performance and user productivity, In the event of a system
failure, Unify VISION AppServer ensures continuous operation by
automatically rerouting user requests to other available services.
''We have seen an increasing requirement to provide scaleable
applications that give customers a seamless, integrated view of many
sources of data that exist in their enterprises,'' said Linda Mentzer,
vice president, Marketing for Data General's AViiON Server Division.
''This is especially true in the healthcare market, where information
often exists in numerous systems. The combined power and scalability of
the Data General AViiON 20000 NUMA and the VISION AppServer deliver the
high reliability and performance that our customers require to manage
their large enterprise systems.''
Parallel Server Architecture Maximizes Application Performance
Inherent in highly integrated systems is the fact that many transactions
performed by services require interaction with multiple underlying
information systems. In many cases, these invocations could be performed
in parallel. Unify VISION AppSeTVer provides asynchronous messaging to
enable services to perform several operations in parallel, either on a
single or across multiple servers. This approach minimizes transaction
time and maximizes server resource utilization.
Pricing and Availability
Unify VISION AppServer and AppBuilder has been available worldwide since
May 1. Licensing for Unify VISION AppServer will be server-based at $500
per concurrent user. Licensing for Unify VISION AppBuilder will be
$7,295 per application developer.
About Unify Corporation
Unify Corporation provides enterprise software solutions that enable
corporations to deliver centralized customer service platforms by
integrating legacy, custom-built, and packaged applications with the
Internet.
Unify's professional services organization provides a full range of
services to help customers successfully deliver their application
initiatives. Unify's product line includes Unify VISION AppServer, Unify
VISION AppBuilder, ACCELL/SQL and the Unify DataServer product family.
Headquartered in San Jose, California, Unify has direct sales offices
throughout North America, Europe and Japan, with a network of
distributors, VARs, OEMs and systems integrators worldwide. Unify has
over 375,000 users worldwide, including leaders in telecommunications,
financial services, commercial industries and government. Unify product
and service information is located on the World Wide Web at
unify.com. |
