Tuesday, February 17, 2004

OpenStorm Launches

Today we are officially launching OpenStorm Software. See: http://www.openstorm.com We unofficially launched the company in August of 2002 - but went back into a semi-stealth mode to significantly enhance the product.

Our primary goal was simple: create a product that had the simplicity of a Microsoft tool and the scalability and reliability of an IBM tool. We think we did it. First, we took our original .Net orchestration engine and rewrote it in Java for the J2EE platform. The design leverages a message oriented architecture and facilitates logical and physical tiering between the 'communication server' (http, etc.), the message broker (JMS, MSMQ) and the orchestration server (native BPEL, exposed as a service).

Then, we rewrote the entire user interface for the developer tooling. We chose the .Net platform for the UI for a couple of reasons: 1. We believe that we can build better interfaces in a shorter period of time than on just about any other platform. 2. We intend on facilitating "Office Orchestration" - enough said.

The only issue we are having from a timing perspective is that the .Net Web Service Enhancements (WSE) remain in beta. Thus, we will be waiting on some enhancements before we make the .Net BPEL server available. We also decided that we wouldn't make the first release downloadable. Instead, we are inviting partners and qualified prospects to install the system and work with an assigned OpenStorm team to ensure success.

I think the product turned out great. It will serve as the foundation for service oriented integration (A2A and B2B). It will also serve as the underlying engine for the next generation of BPM (Service Oriented, Process Driven Architectures).

Lastly, I want to congratulate the team - you kicked ass. They are now busy working on the next release. Stay tuned.

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