Bridging The Gap

Mainsoft Corp. is looking to bridge the gap between two popular Web-development environments. It's offering a product that lets companies move applications built in Microsoft's Visual Basic and C# to Java platforms.

Windows and Java skills often are split between developer teams. "They tend not to mix and match," Gartner analyst Mark Driver says. Mainsoft MainWin J2EE, priced at $5,000 per developer, could enlist Visual Basic programmers in Java Web projects, he says.

Mainsoft faces allegations that a recent leak of Microsoft source code came from one of its computers. Mainsoft president and CEO Yaacov Cohen says it's unclear how the breach happened. Says Cohen: "We are investigating with Microsoft and law-enforcement officials."