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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chaz who wrote (31924)	9/20/2000 12:58:57 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

EAI = Enterprise Application Integration There is a big push in EAI projects these days stimulated by the web when companies move to putting customer-oriented functions on their sites that need to interface to multiple, separate internal systems that never had to communicate before. The other big stimulus is doing something like the implementation of a new ERP package and needing to get it to interface to a flock of in-house or otherwise sourced apps. My notes from about a year ago show this as a .6B$ market then heading to a projected $2B in 2002. Or, more to the point of the potential tornado, in 1998 there was about $135B spent on applications and $47B spent on integrating them. I.e., as the speaker (John Spiers of Forte) put it, a $50B problem with $500M of product sales, i.e., 99% services. (he projected $5B in 2002). Part of the challenge here is interfacing to popular packages like SAP and Siebel, for which a number of companies offer solutions, part is interfacing to in-house and legacy applications, for which a few people offer meaningful tools, and part is that one is also often trying to introduce new functionality, e.g., web exposure or business process integration among the applications. So, it is a very complex market, but a vendor who can significantly reduce the amount of custom development, can make a major shift in implementation cost, so the incentive is high.

To: chaz who wrote (31924)	9/21/2000 12:20:01 AM
From: lenpagon	Respond to of 54805

EAI is Enterprise Application Integration. Current players include Vitria, Webmethods, Tibco, IBM, and others. It is different than middleware...which integrates or web enables applications. EAI products enable processes across applications (both packages and legacy systems)...the packages involve process design tools, translation tools, and adapters...mostly XML based. It solves a huge problem with organizations that want to web-enable hetergeneous systems and don't have the time to implement or reimplement ERP. It is building an XML-based web-enabled information layer above the enterprise packages and legacy systems for building an extended enterprise for customers, distributors, and suppliers. IMHO...it's still in the chasm perhaps just entering the bowling alley. It belongs in the gorrilla hunt list. It is good stuff...there are white papers on respective web-sites if you want to learn more. I would start with Vitrias site. Len