Companies to Watch 2004Intelligence | Integration | Infrastructure | Collaborative Business Integration
by Jeanette Burriesci Opportunities for integration in the enterprise abound, both for static information and dynamic processes. The most successful companies will enable a broad array of integration tasks and tie them together through process management. 1. Ascential Software Corp.HQ: Westboro, Mass. Ascential is now the data integration revenue leader, thanks to its Mercator Software acquisition. The company has a chance to lead also in terms of user preference in 2004. Informatica is only now adding data quality capabilities, which Ascential already offered, but Ascential may be leap-frogged by Informatica's new PowerCenter 7.0 and next year's Hercules in other capabilities. Regardless, Ascential is riding high in the world of enterprise integration — and that's a good place to be. 2. SeeBeyond Technology Corp.HQ: Monrovia, Calif. SeeBeyond offers a pragmatic, much-needed capability in the recent 5.0 release of its Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) integration broker suite: It can run on the Java virtual machines (JVMs) of the leading J2EE application servers. This gives it, at least in the immediate term, an edge over the competition. 3. Kalido Ltd.HQ: Waterloo, London Kalido's advanced data warehouse management tools serve the needs of some extremely large, complex enterprises with seriously onerous and volatile data integration needs. But most are in Europe. The venerable new CEO is leading Kalido's expansion into the U.S. market. 4. Sonic Software Corp.HQ: Bedford, Mass. While EAI companies struggle to get out of the proprietary interface ghetto, Sonic ESB ("enterprise service bus") has already firmly staked its place in the world of the open-standards message broker. IBM's recent execution of an ESB strategy validates Sonic, but also threatens it because of IBM's strength. 5. InterSystems Corp.HQ: Cambridge, Mass. InterSystems turned a new leaf in 2003 by creating a new line of business after 25 years of steady but slow growth in the ODBMS space. At its official announcement late in the year, the Ensemble platform already had 22 referenceable customers in production. Similar to BEA in its philosophy, Ensemble supports enterprise application integration during the app development cycle. Ensemble has its own bag of tricks, though, especially related to metadata management. 6. Fujitsu Software Corp.HQ: Tokyo Fujitsu Software's Interstage suite supports business process integration with several technology pieces, working extensively through XML-based standards. Now that Fujitsu Software's massive parent company has committed to using its might to promote the software division worldwide with its sales force, channels, and advertising, its profile is likely to increase in 2004. 7. Tibco Software Inc.HQ: Palo Alto, Calif. Tibco is one of the top EAI vendors likely to survive in the near term as an independent entity. By acquiring Praja in 2002, it was the first of its ilk to move into the business activity monitoring (BAM) space. As enterprises struggle with the overwhelming need to have a nimble application integration platform that supports business process integration, Tibco has a strong sales proposition. 8. webMethods Inc.HQ: Fairfax, Va. WebMethods's strategy for staying in the application integration game looks sound: expanding into open standard-based integration, business process management, and BAM. Because it's pursuing much of this expansion through acquisition, webMethods must be careful and act quickly to have a cohesive product set. If it does, it will continue to lead. 9. Siperian Corp.HQ: San Mateo, Calif. Siperian looks on the surface like an enterprise information integration (EII) company. But it takes a unique, more prepackaged, approach to side-stepping the batch-load process of data integration, to remove latency from linking transactions with customer data. 10. MetaMatrix Inc.HQ: New York In the field of EII (or "federated data management" — the terms are almost interchangeable) MetaMatrix stands out. SAP is embedding MetaMatrix in its banner NetWeaver platform, which has undoubtedly infused MetaMatrix with more fiscal strength than its competitors. It's also a baby of Ray Lane, former COO of Oracle and now a VC partner, which can't hurt. 11. Group 1 SoftwareHQ: Lanham, Md. Although Acxiom and Harte Hanks are bigger data cleansing companies, Group 1 is now a breed apart. Its purchase of Sagent this year gives it great data integration cred. 12. Sunopsis Inc.HQ: Burlington, Mass. Relatively new, Sunopsis took a fresh approach when designing its software for data transformation and the integration of data and applications. Twelve consecutive quarters of growth indicate that the company's fresh approach has considerable merit.
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