ERP legend Jan Baan is making an enterprise applications sequel to BAAN Software, but this time the story line is built around a service-oriented architecture (SOA). His latest venture, Cordys Inc., earlier this week unveiled the latest version of its composite application development suite adds usability enhancements said to speed deployment and return on investment.
Cordys' Business Collaboration Platform (BCP) comes with an Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) that enables developers to share and reuse application functionality (or components) as well as combine existing and new components within newly created event-driven composite applications. Since its ESB doesn't carry any legacy systems baggage, as is the case with competitors' products, composite applications built with its development suite are less complex to create and maintain and less costly to deploy and scale, said Arjen Westerink, Cordys Americas product marketing manger, in an interview.
Version 4.2, in fact, integrates a business process and applications modeling environment into the user interface to enable developers to simultaneously model and test newly generated processes and code. Called Cordys Studio, the modeling tool can help developers accelerate deployment by ensuring that new composite applications can be quickly and effectively tested for business fit before they are rolled out. Version 4.2's new virtual desktop provides a unified way to administer development projects, which can help keep teams on track, Westerink said.
"Although Cordys is relatively new to the market, it has developed an architecture that is tremendously mature and which demonstrates an excellent understanding of what organizations need from a business process management (BPM) solution," noted Ian Charlesworth, an analyst with the UK-based Butler Group, in a prepared statement. "Perhaps more than any other vendor in this broad area, Cordys has recognized the need to embrace collaboration within the context of a business process, whether this be application-to-application, application-to-person, or person-to-person collaboration."
Founded in 2001 by Jan Baan (and backed by his well-endowed trust fund) the Netherlands-based company recently established a North American headquarters in Sterling, Va. The 575-person company, which hired many of the key members of the BAAN Software team, claims to have 75-plus customers, 20 which have fully installed its BCP.
Manufacturing is among Cordy's targeted markets, along with financial services, healthcare and telecommunications, Westerink said. The company, which sells primarily through systems integrators, recently disclosed deals with two manufacturers, Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Inc. (Willow Grove, PA), a supplier of semiconductor wire bonding assembly equipment, and Trimble (Sunnyvale, CA), a manufacturer of global positioning systems products.
Kulicke & Soffa's first composite application provides executives, line-managers, and individual sales personnel with real-time access to aggregated or granular sales quota and performance information across the company's hundreds of product lines. Called Salesman Reporting Solution, the application aggregates and summarizes raw sales data from six back-end systems that record the company's sales orders and sales force performance.
"Cordys' Business Collaboration Platform helps Kulicke & Soffa achieve real-time visibility and better control over our key global business processes," said Jeffrey Hartigan, Kulicke & Soffa's chief information officer and vice president, information technology, in a prepared statement. "Our new Salesman Reporting Solution is the first composite application to deliver additional value from our BCP investment, and provides the enterprise with real-time visibility and more functional access to our mission critical sales data."
Using Cordys' BCP, Trimble is developing new business systems and process capabilities that will be integrated with existing systems. Key to the project is the replacement of multiple proprietary and third-party legacy applications with a new unified and scalable platform. "Cordys' technology platform gives Trimble the solution we need to more rapidly deploy applications, reduce IT costs and streamline key business processes," said Robert Denis, Trimble's CIO, in a prepated statement.
BCP can be purchased on a server, user and/or usage-based model. Entry pricing is around $30,000, and includes the ESB, Westerink said.