Here is an interesting release I just saw:
"First Union Bank Selects Inprise's VisiBroker ORBS for Strategic Financial Services and Call Center Applications
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., July 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Inprise Corporation (Nasdaq: INPR - news), a leading provider of distributed software solutions for corporate enterprises, today announced that First Union, the sixth-largest bank holding company in the United States, has chosen Inprise's VisiBroker for Java and C++ object request brokers as its underlying technology for its Customer Central and Document Central internal business applications. First Union provides financial services to more than 16 million retail and corporate clients nationwide. VisiBroker enables First Union to build common components that are implemented across several internal business applications and are used by multiple First Union divisions, including the Life Insurance and Annuity groups. By building the common components with VisiBroker, First Union's applications have the ability to move to a strategic architecture like CORBA with little development effort. VisiBroker also provides First Union with a flexible architecture in which it can easily replace the underlying functionality with a newer or changed version that may run on different server platforms and is built in a different language than the original implementation of the business object.
Based on the results of extensive ORB product evaluations, First Union decided to build its components with Inprise's VisiBroker technology products. VisiBroker was chosen because of the strong balance between the functionality and performance of its Java and C++ offerings, its greater scalability, support for large transaction volumes, stability, ease-of-use, and superior documentation. Compared to its competitors, VisiBroker offers better compliance with the Object Management Group's specification and provides First Union with greater interoperability with a choice of other third party extensions. Finally, VisiBroker's stature as a de facto CORBA standard established through Inprise's partnerships with companies such as Oracle, Netscape, Novell, Silicon Graphics, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, IBM and others, played a significant role in First Union's decision.
First Union's Distributed Object Integration Team (DO IT) has utilized its banking, financial, and distributed objects expertise to create a set of business objects or distributed common components that perform the functions of Customer Central and Document Central. Inprise's VisiBroker for Java and C++ provide the essential underlying connectivity piece that enables employees using Customer Central and Document Central to transparently conduct transactions involving the coordination of several heterogeneous legacy systems distributed across the network. Customer Central provides an easy-to-use object front end to First Union's mainframe-based Customer Information System which is designed and estimated to serve approximately 200 users by year's end. Document Central enables call center agents located throughout the franchise to automatically generate customer correspondence easily by merging customer data with existing document templates for typical bank correspondence, such as address change confirmations and loan application forms. First Union has designed Document Central to accommodate the 6,000 users it expects to have online over the next 12 months.
''First Union's use of Inprise's VisiBroker products is an example of how corporations can use CORBA and distributed object computing for a genuine competitive advantage,'' stated Randy Hietter, Inprise's director of VisiBroker product marketing. ''We are pleased that First Union has selected VisiBroker for C++ and Java for their superior scalability, openness and ease-of-use.''
''With First Union's growth rate, it is essential that we architect solutions for performance and scalability,'' stated Bill Barnett, manager of DO IT, First Union Corporation [NYSE:FTU - news]. ''Inprise's VisiBroker for Java and C++ proved to be the most scalable and stable products in the marketplace, offering the greatest productivity for our developers.''
Inprise's VisiBroker -- The Leading Deployed ORB Technology
VisiBroker for Java was the industry's first Java ORB, the first to implement a CORBA standard for Java interoperability, and the first to support the Internet Inter-Orb Protocol (IIOP--the standard for object communications over a network). Deployed licenses for Inprise's VisiBroker ORB surpassed 30 million in 1997, making VisiBroker the most widely distributed and adopted ORB worldwide. Industry partnerships with Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL - news), Hitachi, Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL - news), Netscape (Nasdaq: NSCP - news), Silicon Graphics (Nasdaq: SGI - news) and others have played a key role in making VisiBroker the leading deployed ORB in the computer industry.
Inprise's VisiBroker ORB technology is designed to facilitate the development and deployment of distributed object-based applications that are scaleable, flexible and easily maintained. VisiBroker allows organizations to leverage existing corporate applications while developing and deploying new distributed applications. VisiBroker for Java and VisiBroker for C++ implement the CORBA 2.0 and IIOP standards developed by the Object Management Group (OMG), and can interoperate with other CORBA-2.0 compliant ORBs in a distributed object computing environment.
About First Union
First Union is a leading provider of financial services to more than 16 million retail and corporate clients throughout the East Coast and the nation. It is the sixth-largest bank holding company in the U.S. with assets of $220 billion as of April 30, 1998. For more information on First Union, visit the company's web site at firstunion.com.
About Inprise Corporation
Inprise Corporation is a leading provider of software and services that simplify the complexity of enterprise application development, deployment and management. The company is distinguished for its award-winning Borland family of rapid application development products and for proven scalable middleware. Inprise integrates these offerings with application management products to provide customers with an end-to-end solution. Inprise customers include information technology departments and independent software developers around the world. Founded in 1983, Inprise is headquartered in Scotts Valley, California and has operations around the world. Inprise has more than 900 employees worldwide. For more information on Inprise, customers can visit the company's web site at inprise.com.
NOTE: Inprise product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Inprise Corporation. Java is a trademark or registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks of the party using such names.
SOURCE: Inprise Corporation"
TTOSBT |
