Extricity Delivers Packaged Business Community Integration.

By William Fellows

Capitalizing on its claim to be way ahead of the game when it comes to business-to-business application process integration over IP, Extricity Inc is building out its Alliance software suite with new pre-packaged solutions for vertical and cross- industry markets. It will add purpose-built templates with pre- defined process logic and metrics for integrating applications in the semiconductor, electronic device and consumer goods  manufacturers, third party logistics and e-commerce supply side integration. It has other modules in hand for auto, chemical and utilities industries and expects to release two or three new templates each quarter. It trumpets its ability to be able to provide integration services outside of a company's firewall to support e-commerce and supply chain services to customers and suppliers.

Extricity claims to have beaten out two other traditional EAI enterprise application integration suppliers - one thought to be Software Technologies Corp - in winning Ingram Micro Inc and Selectron Corp the Alliance suite. Between them the two companies are now providing ordering, configurations and distribution and outsourced manufacturing services for a range of PC giants and are integrating their respective business processes using Alliance. Ingram uses IBM CICS, PowerBuilder and Oracle manufacturing, while Solectron uses Baan. Extricity claims that it won the business on its ability to separate and coordinate internal and shared external processes.

Extricity has added a new 3.0 cut of its core integration technology called Esync which it says enables developers to create a single process to define and manage a large number of other business classes and rules, reducing the complexity of managing multiple partnerships with different terms and conditions. 3.0 also includes a new XML data converter enabling one company's terminology - such as order number - to be transformed into another, such as a PO number.

Extricity has collected up its third party application integration tools into a suite called AllianceFusion including SAP, Baan, PeopleSoft and Oracle application adapters, plus MQSeries, MSMQ, Active Software and Tibco middleware. It can support EDI, web browser access and simple data exchange utilities for deploying its products to partners. Alliance services start at $200,000-up.

Extricity boasts of a recent AMR Group study which calls Extricity the most sophisticated EAI framework solution by dint of its external business process modeling and ability to separate public and private processes. Business-to-business EAI over IP is being dubbed BCI or business community integration these days.

Extricity argues that back office integration got the EAI market going while business-to-business software was still largely waiting for a market to happen. EAI is low-level glue and an acronym that ISVs are keen to add after their names to boost valuation and IPO prospects, it claims. Unlike Alliance, Extricity claims that traditional EAI requires MIS shops commit to continued and ongoing investment in their solutions.

90-person Extricity, which began product shipments last year, says it has already exceeded its revenue pLAN and expects to triple sales this year. It claims to have sold around 100 licenses. It has raised $24m venture capital funding to date and doesn't expect to need further investment before it holds an IPO.