August 14, 2000

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Reach Legacy Databases By Phone

Esker and other vendors have created software to access back-end data via WAP

By Aisha M. Williams

More on WAP:

Alternatives To WAP (7/24/00) Web Apps Take To The Airwaves (6/26/00) TechWeb Experts Advise Care In Deploying WAP (7/6/00)

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magine being able to give your employees wireless access to business-critical data stored on your company's legacy databases--without spending thousands of hours on the conversion. Esker Inc.'s Corridor Builder is designed to help companies do just that.

The software will let developers pull data selectively from mainframe and legacy systems. Employees can then access it via mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and other handheld devices that support the Wireless Application Protocol via a URL. As a result, companies may find new uses for their antiquated back-end systems.

Of course, given that the companies Esker hopes will use the product are still on old legacy systems, they may not immediately realize the value of wireless access. "These are companies that haven't even moved their back-end systems to a client-server architecture, so it's a totally different way of think-ing for them," says Darcy Fowkes, research director at the Aberdeen Group.

But once they see the light, she says, the concept is likely to catch on. "The Internet allows you to access host information residing on these old databases without changing or rewriting it in any way," Fowkes says. "Developers just have to create a path to access the information on handheld devices."

Esker isn't the only vendor developing such applications. Curious Networks Corp. is planning to release its Build Once Access Anywhere platform at the end of September.

"There are quite a few vendors out there developing middleware as a smart overlay to legacy systems and data that companies want to convert to wireless platforms," says Dave Olsen, a VP at LabMorgan, a unit within J.P. Morgan & Co. But many of them have yet to develop a turnkey solution, he says. "There's a lot of complexity and work involved in taking legacy data and making it accessible via mobile devices, and I haven't seen a product avail-able that doesn't require a lot of work on the development side," Olsen says.

Corridor Builder will be available by the end of October. Pricing hasn't been set.

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