| An SI Board Since April 1998 |
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INPR |
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Inprise develops platform-independent development tools primarily targeted toward the large e-commerce systems populating the Internet and corporate intranets. This enabling technology is an essential component of the new information economy. The only comparitive companies are the respective tools divisions of Sun and IBM -- solid products but widely regarded to be shadows of Inprise technology.
Inprise also owns middle-ware technology: software that provides an intelligent, object-oriented communications network for distributed applications such as e-commerce. This software bridges the gap between legacy network and database protocols and modern, component based software running in a distributed (networked) environment. Iona (symbol:IONA) is the primary competitor in this market.
Companies like Oracle and IBM have bet their businesses on the use of Java and XML for B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) for e-commerce solutions. Those companies planning on deploying high-capacity e-commerce solutions over the Internet should pay attention to what Inprise has been delivering.
In a nutshell, B2B e-commerce is an application of Java and XML technology. That puts Inprise squarely in the center of this revolution: Inprise provides the tools to create these systems. Without such tools, XML and B2B are lifeless specifications.
The transition from old economy information sytems to new economy systems has only started to run. Oracle will push developers strongly toward Inprise technology for deploying e-commerce solutions with the next release. It's complex technology and a monumental effort to get it right but they have succeeded. The magnitude of the effort creates a very large barrier to entry. This is serious technology and the number of entrants are few and far between. Companies that can and do benefit are BEA Systems, Silver Stream, Oracle, IBM, Allaire and other Application Server (read: generator of dynamic webpages) vendor. Inprise also has an App Server but they do not rely on that product to sell their tools.
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