InformationWeek

Reef, a privately held company financed by Cisco Systems, Net Fund Europe, Viventures, and other investors, this month began shipping the next generation of its software, Internetware 2.0. The suite consists of components for adding, creating, and maintaining content; building and managing online communities; and cataloging and E-commerce functions.

The upgrade of Internetware is much easier to use, according to Arthur Goodrich, VP of marketing and national accounts at Alliance Medical in Phoenix. "The administration interface is a lot more streamlined," he says. "It's more icon-and menu-driven. Before, you had to go behind the scenes and do some coding. Now you can just point and click."

Most Web software requires some technical skills, but Reef's goal is to let business users build and maintain content-rich Web sites, according to Carol Baroudi, an analyst at the Hurwitz Group. "People have spent a lot of money getting their site up and every time they want to make a little change, they have to go back to technology specialists or systems integrators to make that change,'' she says. "Internetware lets people get an operational site up quickly."

At the core of the suite is an object relational database that's integrated with an application engine. Because it's based on standard Java protocols, the software can be integrated with a variety of back-office applications, Reef executives say. For example, the software can access Web content stored in any Java Database Connectivity-compliant database.

Alliance plans to integrate Internetware with its J.D. Edwards OneWorld software "so our customers can track orders, maintain accounts, take down savings reports, and check pricing," Goodrich says.