InformationWeek

November 10, 1997

Ready To Fly

If Java takes off, Novera's enterprise platform may, too

By Alan S. Horowitz

ay Noorda, former chairman and CEO of Novell, remade Novell into a networking company to capitalize on the move to networked computing. Jim Clarke created Netscape Communications to fill the need for easy access to cyberspace. Now, Herb Rush and his partners at Novera Software Inc. say they see the market diving into Java, the programming language from Sun Microsystems.

Seeking to provide functionality that Java lacks, they've created Epic (Enterprise Platform for Internet Computing)-a platform containing features and functions end users and software developers can use to build, deploy, and manage Java applications.

Epic, which came out at the beginning of this year, was designed around Java to deliver thin-client, business applications. Novera CEO and president Rush isn't quite willing to call his product a Java operating system-platform is the term he uses-but it certainly has some of the qualities of one. In fact, Epic somewhat resembles early NetWare, with file and print capabiliti es that Java lacks.

In addition, Epic has libraries and development tools, a client run-time module, and more than 10 services, including file, print, directory, mainframe, relational database management system (RDBMS), broadcast, and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). Epic is missing some of the functionality of an operating system, such as memory management, but it can run on top of Windows 95 and NT, Unix, and other operating systems. This, of course, is what Java promises with Sun's "write once, run anywhere" claim.

Epic is designed to scale for a large number of users. Its management capabilities were designed as part of the product from the beginning-a superior approach, Rush says, to client-server systems, where development and management issues were afterthoughts.

Rush and his founding partners Tim Hamilton, VP of sales, and Michael Frey, director of system engineering, are no strangers to the software industry. Rush founded Brixton Systems, which he sold in 1994 for $18 million. He admits he wasn't immediately sold on Java. Only after using it, seeing its potential and its shortcomings, and recognizing what large companies might want from it, did he move to Java.

Initial Vision For Novera
Novera, in Burlington, Mass., began in late 1995, with an emphasis on Fortune 500 companies. Of his initial vision, Rush says, "I was asking, `What does the infrastructure of that corporation really look like? What are the implications on the help desk? How are you going to manage and configure things? How are things going to look like one big system?' That was the goal of Novera-to really focus on what the inside of the corporation looks like if you have 10,000 Java applications and people roaming, and they want their data to come to them."

He adds: "I offer a Java environment so it is very easy for t he developer to use and is very easy for the IT manager to manage. That's the premise of the company."

Legacy Support
Epic supports legacy environments, such as NetWare, as long as the system has a Java Virtual Machine running. Directory services link applications to a central directory. Epic also has remote file and print services, as well as a time service that synchronizes application processing across networks. The E-mail gateway can let an application access any TCP/IP services.

A database access tool lets the Java developer practice a relational database without having to know anything about SQL (structured query language), says Hamilton. "All the person has to know is Java and how it works." A mainframe tool also simplifies users' lives, he says. "All they have to say is, `I want this piece of data, and it is someplace on the mainframe.' The Epic platform will go out and get it."

Epic is also strong on management, including configuration management. It lets an end user ask, "Where's m y stuff?" and have the directory server tell him, Rush says.

Novera's future is tied tightly to Java's. Not everyone is convinced that Java will become ubiquitous, but some are betting heavily it will. Charles River Ventures, a venture capital firm in Waltham, Mass., invested about $3.5 million in Novera-half the total money the company has raised. Ted Dintersmith, a general partner at Charles River, says Novera has a "broad product vision, an outstanding technical team, and [is] solving a fundamental problem. Companies that put their applications across the enterprise need a way to manage them."

Epic could fulfill this need, says Dintersmith, and become a major player in what is potentially an enormous market. "If thin-client computing takes off, it's a billion-dollar market shortly after the turn of the century," he notes.

"A very useful stepping stone," is how Martin Marshall, an industry analyst at Zona Research in Redwood City, Calif., describes Epic. "Java needs to move from the `make everything yourself' stage to the `just make the incrementals yourself and use network services that have been created elsewhere' one. It is possible for Java programmers to do everything that Novera has done, but most programmers that I know of would rather not re-create functionality that they could buy."

Users are optimistic as well. Bear, Stearns & Co. uses Epic to access objects and browsers from a Java base, says Bill Moss, the New York investment banker's managing director for information services. "We are running a heterogeneous environment. Since Novera is written in Java, we don't have to worry which platform it is running on," he adds.

In addition, Moss says, Epic is easy to set up, taking only three to four hours, and it doesn't tax the system. "It has a small footprint on each box it runs on," he says.

Epic is being used in a variety of ways. By using Epic and Java-based applications, a telecommunications company cut by one-third the number of screens customer-service reps had to understand and navi gate, Ross says. A retail chain uses it for in-store kiosks to gather customer feedback. A manufacturer uses it to simplify dealer access to corporate data.

Charles Brault, practice manager at Internet Information Services, a systems integrator in Bethesda, Md., has been selling Epic since early 1997. "This is a good solid product for a company that is trying to develop communication and Internet tools, and companies that have diverse networks and people in remote offices," he says.

Of course, not everything about Novera's prospects is positive. "It's only for those people that are going Java, Java, Java," says Zona's Marshall. He notes that those who want to move to the thin-client model will not necessarily use Java-and therefore won't need Epic.

Then, there's Novera's experience with Corel Corp. in Ottawa. In the fall of 1996, Novera announced that Corel would use Epic for its Java application suite. Corel was to rely on Epic for file, print, and management, but now apparently is moving toward smal ler Java-based apps instead. "People are looking for applets, smaller applications, deployed on the Internet or intranet," says a Corel spokesman. Corel will still use Epic, the spokesman adds; however, since the company won't be shipping a shrink-wrapped suite, Epic won't be in- tegrated into the product but instead will be a third-party application.

Novera has staked an early claim on the Java platform niche. It has financial backing and experienced management. There's a good chance it will take off-providing Java does first.

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