JackBe Unveils Rich Enterprise Application (REA) Platform to Accelerate Business Value from SOA Investments

October 4, 2006; 02:37 AM
JackBe, the premier Rich Enterprise Application (REA) software company, announced its Presto REA platform, the industry’s most comprehensive solution for delivering enterprise Ajax applications based on SOA and Web services. Applications built on the Presto platform gain business-class reliability, scalability, and service governance. The results are highly interactive browser–based applications that help users to optimize both their regular and ad hoc activities.

Enterprises are making significant investments to create SOA infrastructures that produce SOA and Web services. The focus is now shifting to “putting a face on SOA” by enabling distributed business units to easily consume these services and thus accelerate SOA benefits and ROI. JackBe’s Presto will enable enterprises to fully realize their SOA vision through Rich Enterprise Applications deployed at the forefront of business.

The Presto REA platform offers an enterprise-grade architecture based on a complete services governance foundation, unlike consumer-grade solutions or client-side mashup tools that leave governance to the browser. Complementing Presto’s governance features are components that provide reliable Ajax messaging, dynamic combination or ‘mashup’ of disparate SOA services, development and run-time frameworks, and a browser-based studio that empowers users to address their own application needs.

“There are scores of new products designed to accelerate Ajax development and client-side mashup of Web services,” said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. “What makes JackBe’s Presto platform unique is its central focus on SOA service governance. JackBe clearly understands that governance, scalability and reliability are critical factors for enterprises as they leverage SOA and Ajax to create the next generation of rich enterprise applications.”

With the introduction of Presto, JackBe addresses the needs of enterprises wanting to empower business units with more flexible and productive use of core processes, logic and data while maintaining stringent access governance, reliability, and scalability. Presto enables governed access to internal services, enterprise data sources, and pre-defined external (third-party) Web services through powerful professional developer and business user development environments.

“JackBe was delivering Ajax-based applications within major enterprises long before the term ‘Ajax’ had even been coined,” commented Dion Hinchcliffe, noted Web 2.0 visionary and CEO of consulting firm Hinchcliffe & Company. “Today’s announcement extends that vision by recognizing the tremendous business value that can be delivered with a multi-tier platform that directly extends SOA with Ajax. JackBe’s new Presto platform will make the development of Ajax-based Rich Enterprise Applications faster and easier, but its real game-changing potential is to empower business users to create their own situational or ‘tacit’ applications based on rapidly changing needs.”

“Our new platform goes beyond current enterprise Web 2.0 technologies to help optimize and streamline the actual business activities, increasing the speed and accuracy of decision-making by business professionals,” said JackBe CEO and co-founder Luis Derechin. “These ’long tail’ composite applications integrate other existing SOA services and processes to address high-value business needs that would not be funded or built based on traditional IT priorities.”

JackBe’s Presto REA Platform

Presto addresses three important business requirements for deploying Ajax-based Rich Enterprise Applications:

• Service Governance: From identity, to network security, to functional entitlements
• Empowerment: For both advanced IT developers as well as business unit power users
• Reliability: From robust and secure Ajax messaging to scalable service gateways and dynamic service mashups

To address these business needs, Presto includes five major platform components:

• Enterprise Service Director: Services governance management for IT and functional process owners. Provides access control and mediation gateway for trusted internal and external services including database, WS/REST, .NET and others; also handles authentication, authorization, and user entitlements
• Enterprise Mashup Server: Dynamic combination or ‘mashup’ of disparate SOA services to generate on-demand views that optimize business activity
• Ajax Service Bus (ASB): Highly scalable, secure and reliable bi-directional browser-to-server messaging with support for true push-based events and once-and-only-once message delivery.
• NQ Ajax Framework: Development and runtime application development framework for advanced developers, with standards-based schema-driven mark-up language and high-performance micro-footprint runtime
• NQ Studio: Browser-based visual WYSIWYG studio for user-driven application assembly and service access that can be customized by IT to provide a domain-specific environment for its organization

Presto will be priced on a per-processor basis starting at $20,000 for a perpetual license; subscription pricing is also available. Beta shipments will begin in November, with a general-availability release planned for the first quarter of 2007. For more information or to express interest in participating in the beta program, please visit: www.jackbe.com.

About JackBe Corporation

JackBe is the industry leader in Rich Enterprise Application (REA) solutions that combine SOA and Ajax with governance, reliability, and user empowerment to optimize business activity. The company’s flagship product, the Presto REA platform, enables enterprises to increase revenue and profits by improving the usability of their Web applications while leveraging their investments in creating SOA services and data.

Headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland, JackBe’s satisfied clients already include more than 35 industry leaders worldwide supporting more than 4 million end users. Customers include Citigroup, McKesson, Tupperware, Sears, NutriSystem, Forbes, and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. The company's deployments and deep expertise span the financial services, government, e-commerce and telecommunications sectors.

More information about JackBe is available at www.jackbe.com, by email at [email protected], or by phone at 240-744-7620.