E.piphany Embeds Web Servers

E.piphany Inc. announced that popular Web-application servers from IBM and BEA Systems Inc. will be embedded directly into E.piphany's E6 customer relations suite of applications. E.piphany says its users with Java-centric development groups will have one less piece of application infrastructure to deal with by leveraging a single, open-standards framework to rapidly roll out CRM applications, adapt business processes, and extend application functionality. That translates to less money and time spent on implementation and maintenance, according to Phil Fernandez, executive vice president of products and marketing at E.piphany. By embedding IBM's WebSphere server and BEA's WebLogic Server in its CRM application, the Mountain View, CA-based company is also furthering its commitment to Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Sun Microsystems Inc.'s open standards platform, Fernandez says. J2EE is facing off against Microsoft Corp.'s .NET architecture for dominance as the open standards framework for dealing with Web services. Loosely defined, a Web service is a way of developing software to expose some business functionality over the Internet using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Web services are portable, interoperable, and not tied to any one vendor, which is what makes them so useful. E.piphany is a Microsoft partner and supports Microsoft products, but "you can't support both J2EE and .NET at the development level," Fernandez says. "E.piphany has made an unwavering commitment to J2EE, while many others in the space are what I call promiscuous partners that want to support both Java and Microsoft while still maintaining their own proprietary standards," says Liz Shahnam Roche, vice president and director, CRM Infusion at market researcher META Group. Roche also notes that embedding two choices for Web application servers is not big news, but is news. Roche says she thinks it is unlikely that many other competitors will follow suit. "They are not the first vendor to embed a commercially available apps server, but they are among the first to do it relative to CRM," Roche says. "And since others are not likely to embed the commercially available server, E.piphany will have an advantage." E.piphany E.6 with integrated IBM WebSphere and BEA's WebLogic servers is available immediately. Users of the existing version of E.6 will receive the upgrade free as part of regular maintenance.