InformationWeek

January 25, 1999

A Useful Tool In Search Of A Product Category

No matter how it's classified, Business Engine is efficient at several project-management tasks.

By Philip Gill

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ohn O'Neil has an identity crisis on his hands. He knows who he is--he's chairman and CEO of Business Engine Software Corp., a San Francisco software developer formerly known as Micro-Frame Technologies. But the company's primary product, also dubbed Business Engine, defies easy description. It's a special-purpose database, data warehouse, or data mart for managing projects and resources. It also has some online analytical processing query and analysis capabilities.

Business Engine collects time sheets via E-mail and allots time to appropriate projects for billback purposes. It can be integrated with enterprise resource planning and other third-party packages via standard application programming interfaces. And, of course, it does just about anything required of a desktop project-management application, such as Microsoft Project--but at a much higher level and with considerably more sophistication. In fact, Business Engine uses Microsoft Project as its standard client application and draws information supplied through Microsoft Project into a back-end Oracle database.

Business Engine also has some knowledge-management elements, associating individuals within a company with their skills and work experience.

"When you talk about the product category we fit into, we're a bit schizophrenic," O'Neil says. "It's an issue we struggle with."

The term "portfolio management" best fits this new class of project-management software, says Matt Light, a research analyst in Gartner Group Inc.'s application development service. Portfolio management captures the comprehensive capabilities of this tool, he says.

Light considers Business Engine a leader in its market because of its tight integration with Microsoft Project, and because it supports integration with other leading, complementary third-party tools.

However it's described, Business Engine's greatest value to an enterprise appears to be its ability to track resources, schedules, and people across multiple ongoing and planned development projects. The typical desktop project- management package handles a single project at a time. These applications don't let department managers get a high-level view of all development activity going on, how resources are being used, or how delays might affect the availability of resources.

Business Engine helps users plan for demand and capacity, perform resource analyses, assign resources, monitor work execution and status, and prioritize resources.

Logically, Business Engine is a middle-tier software layer that sits between an Oracle database and Microsoft Project.

Business Engine's competitors include Primavera Systems' Prospective, Artemis' Views 4 and GlobalView, ABT's ABT Repository, and PlanView, from a company of the same name.

Microsoft is also a potential competitor, although the companies are allies as well. Microsoft has a group-oriented project-management package that's never caught on, and its Microsoft Project 98, the latest desktop release, does offer some limited workgroup functions. Right now, however, there is little danger of a head-to-head battle. Says Light, "Business Engine is close to Microsoft, but not too close."

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