Information Builders Inc. (IBI) is expanding its support of Microsoft and its newly formed channel through its Iway Software company.
Iway, a business integration adapter developer, will be providing a custom line of adapters for the newly released BizTalk Server 2004.
According to IBI,
the BizTalk adapters will enable customers and partners to have code-free access to various applications and data within a .Net framework.
Jake Freivald, director at Iway Software. of New York, said the market is looking at BizTalk Server as a viable platform so longas they are not locked into the Windows platform.
The Iway BizTalk adapters, which are .Net native, are ready for enterprise class applications from Siebel Systems, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, Oracle, SAP, RDMS, IBM’s middleware product MQ Series and CORBA technologies.
The Iway adapters for BizTalk open up IBI’s channel to Microsoft solution providers along with partner who lead with Iway.
Freivald added that it also enables the company to target smaller companies.
“”The 10 to 50 person shop are now target customers for IBI’s channel,”” he said.
IBI in the past has been a direct sales only organization with a modest two or three percent of revenue coming from channels. “”With Iway, we have ramped that up to 10 to 15 per cent and it is increasing monthly,”” Freivald said.
He expects the channel share to increase by 20 to 25 per cent within the next 18 months.
“”It’s a big deal for us.””
Iway is also a big deal for partners. IT/net Corp., an Ottawa-based information management partner, has been offering Iway software to its PeopleSoft and SAP clients for almost a year.
“”They share the strategic piece with us,”” said Richard Larocque, vice-president of sales and operations for the Enterprise Solution Group at IT/net.
“”We are a big service provider around SAP and PeopleSoft and they have strong partnerships with both.
Larocque said, Iway’s approach with integration is not a big, expensive undertaking. In the past, these types of integration projects were quite costly, he said.
Iway saves money and is open and flexible enough to be integration into many applications. “”We can do 250 adapters. Their tools allow us to integrate easier into the Federal Government (one of IT/net’s largest clients). We needed an easy way for us to do integration and (Iway) shines for us,”” he added.
IT/net does not get any margin off the software and makes takes all its revenue from services. Larocque refused to say what his profit margins were but added that it enables the company to maintain its business model.
Freivald said the channel could service customers with these tools at half the price of front end desktop services.
