Data Junction Moves Away From Roots

Data Junction Corp., a privately held company that has sold tools since the mid-80s for translating and integrating data between internal applications, is breaking away from its roots and moving toward the potentially lucrative market of connecting businesses over the Internet. The Austin, Texas, company plans a late summer release of its Data Junction Integration Suite that's tailored for conducting business over the Internet.

While declining to provide details until later in the year, Data Junction president Mike Hoskins says new features will include a metadata repository based on extensible markup language, or XML, an emerging technology for moving data over the Internet. Metadata provides a description of elements within a database. In addition, the upgrade will include a message broker tailored to an event-driven, real-time environment common to supply chain-related transactions. For example, transactions between a manufacturer and supplier would involve events such as moving purchase orders and invoices and provide the latest information on inventory status.

While many companies see emerging Web-services technologies as key to integration over the Internet, companies that need system-to-system integration today will need to look at products like Data Junction's, says Kimberly Knickle, analyst for AMR Research Inc. Companies "have to wait for Web services, whereas if Data Junction has a product now, and the need is immediate, then you go with the integration product vendor," Knickle says.

As an interim release to the upcoming major upgrade, the company on Feb. 25 will ship the Data Junction Integration Suite 7.5.5, which includes enhancements targeted at Global 2000 companies, Hoskins says. To date, Data Junction has been strongest within small and midsize businesses. Among the new enterprise features are adapters for accessing legacy data, such as SAP IDocs and electronic data interchange. In addition, the core integration engine for data extraction and conversion can run on multiple CPUs in parallel for faster processing, and it includes an application-programming interface for connecting to Java applications. The Data Junction Integration Suite runs on HP-UX, IBM-AIX, Linux, Sun Solaris, and Windows. Pricing wasn't released.