InformationWeek

September 29, 1997

Beyond Software: Web-To-Mainframe Software

By Claire Tristram

e're mainframe people," says Janis Burger, project manager for the IBM Virtual Machine at retailer J.C. Penney Co., with a clear note of pride in her voice.

Five years ago, those words would have been a form of suicide-or at least an invitation to be outsourced. But times change. Today, many companies want to keep their legacy systems, and the teams that run them, intact. Small wonder: Mainframes still store roughly 70% of the world's corporate data, estimates the Meta Group. What companies do want is a better way to access that data-say, through a Web browser-without needing to install a Unix box or a Windows NT server as a gateway to do it.

Beyond Software Inc. is here to help. The company's EnterpriseWeb helps customers transform their tired old mainframes into flashy new Web servers. And EnterpriseWeb works straight out of the box. Customers report installing the software in an amazing 15 minutes and writing their first Web page in only a few hours, all without any additional training.

Privately held Beyond, in San Jose, Calif., has been in business for only two years. Though its officers won't release sales figures, its customer list already reads like a who's who of corporate America: In addition to J.C. Penney, there's Bank of America, Boeing, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Pacific Bell, Wells Fargo, US West, and scores of others, all proud to stand up and be counted as mainframe companies. "We've made the host an integral part of the Web," says Burger of J.C. Penney. "To users, it's just another URL on a page. But we get to leverage all the enterprise applications we've spent the last 20 years developing."

Beyond's four c o-founders-Brian Reaves, John Harrington, Erik Woodward, and Ron Kohl-met in 1993, when they worked together on a client-server downsizing project. They ran into all the classic problems: budget overruns, missed deadlines, and applications that stubbornly refused to port. "We all looked at one another one day and said, `Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could keep the data and applications where they are, but use Mosaic-then the browser of choice-`on the front end?'" says Reaves, Beyond's CEO.

Reaves located a shareware product developed by a programmer named Rick Troth to do just that, and Reaves' team was able to complete in just three days what had previously taken them three months to accomplish. Reaves was so impressed with the shareware that he negotiated an exclusive license with Troth. Then, with partners Harrington, Woodward, and Kohl, he founded Beyond in 1995.

The company has kept Troth's original software in the freeware domain as a marketing tool, though it has added cast-iron security fe atures, customer support, and performance improvements to the commercial product. EnterpriseWeb works in IBM VM, OS/390, and MVS environments. Installation costs depend on the size of the mainframe, with current installations ranging from $30,000 to roughly $120,000.

Beyond's impressive customer list has attracted the attention of competitors, including longtime mainframe software specialist Sterling Software and even IBM. But Beyond has the advantage of being first to market with a commercial mainframe Web server. It has also stayed focused, which often gives it a head start on implementing new features.

"IBM tends to develop for the Unix platform first, the mainframe later. And Sterling is also trying to provide cross-platform support," says Wayne Kernochan, VP of commercial systems research at Aberdeen Group Inc. in Boston. "Beyond has concentrated on one thing, and they do it well. They really have the niche to themselves."

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