SCOTTSDALE, AZ, Feb. 16, 2004
- Above All Software announced today the launch of Above
All Studio 1.0, a complete solution for enabling the rapid
assembly of composite applications, at the prestigious
DEMO 2004 Conference taking place February 15-17 at the
Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Roger Sippl, Above All Founder & CEO, and Deborah
Scharfetter, VP of Product Marketing, demonstrated the
new product. The solution delivers on the promise of service-oriented
architectures to transform application development and
application integration by enabling new applications to
be assembled by combining functionality from any number
of existing application systems, with no programming required.
"Above All Software was selected from the hundreds
of companies and technologies that applied to our show
because of its innovative approach that both accelerates
composite application development and makes the underlying
application integration much easier," said Chris
Shipley, Executive Producer, DEMO 2004. "Above All's
new product has great potential to significantly speed
up an enterprise's ability to apply technology to rapidly
changing business needs."
"I consider Above All Studio the combination of
everything I have done in my career in enterprise software,"
said Above All Founder & CEO Roger Sippl, whose previous
companies, Informix, Vantive and Visigenic, pioneered
relational database, three-tier application and application
server technologies. "Our new product enables companies
to address a much wider range of integrated application
needs because we've made it cost effective to deliver
any new composite application in days, not the months
previously required by traditional technologies."
Several companies are already using Above
All Studio to assemble composite applications. One of
those companies is Patient Care Inc.; a New Jersey-based
home health care corporation that spans seven states.
"Above All Studio sits above Patient
Care's applications and helps us insulate our users from
the turmoil in the application portfolio," said Martin
Howard, Senior VP & CIO at Patient Care. "The
composite applications we've assembled match the way users
do their work and is logical and intuitive to use. It's
reduced our training costs, reduced error rates, and enabled
us to be more efficient getting data into the different
underlying systems."
"Overall, Above All allows us to
support our application portfolio with a lot fewer IT
resources and a lot fewer dollars. That adds value to
the corporation," says Howard.
Above All Studio is a complete solution
that reduces cost and development time through the rapid
assembly of composite applications. Composite applications
deliver application integration by combining functionality
from multiple existing application silos. They provide
users with a single interface to complete business tasks
and offer 360-degree access to key business entities such
as customers or suppliers. With composite applications,
users save time and efficiently complete their tasks without
having to navigate multiple applications, repeatedly enter
the same data, or wait on co-workers to provide needed
information or coordination.
According to Gartner there is a .7 probability
that "adoption of composite applications will grow
from fewer than 15% of enterprises in 2003 to at least
60% of enterprises by 2008." [Massimo Pezzini, Vice
President, Gartner Research, Composite Applications Head
Toward the Mainstream, October, 2003.]
Above All Studio's visual assembly environment
enables application developers, business analysts, and
even power users to assemble new applications with no
programming required. Above All Studio leverages a wide
variety of existing software services across an enterprise
including Web services, database stored procedures, application
programming interface calls, Microsoft Office COM operations,
and ODBC database access.
Key capabilities of Above All Studio
include:
Dynamic Meta Data
Repository
Above All Studio automatically discovers, catalogs, and
organizes meta data regarding existing raw services in
its dynamic repository, which is called the Application
Dictionary. Whenever the meta data of a raw service is
refined or enhanced using Studio's visual tools, those
changes are dynamically recorded and added to the repository.
The Application Dictionary is the critical piece of infrastructure
for enabling the assembly of new composite applications,
since it maintains and provides current views of all the
building blocks that are available to Studio's visual
assembly environment.
Refining Services
Above All Studio automatically refines all raw services
in the Application Dictionary repository into a common
business object format that is easy to understand - a
format that is based on both Web services standards and
the principles of object-oriented design. From there,
Studio provides visual tools for simplifying service interfaces,
or combining multiple services into composite services.
These further refinements create more easily used building
blocks that are also automatically cataloged and organized
in the Application Dictionary.
Defining Interoperability
Above All Studio provides visual tools that automatically
capture any implicit relationships between the services
from different application systems. Those tools also assist
in defining new interoperability relationships between
radically disparate applications, and those new relationships
become part of the meta data about the services in the
Application Dictionary repository. [The underlying technology
that enables this crucial capability to define and leverage
interoperability is Above All Software's patent pending
Application Algebra.]
Assembly with No
Programming
Above All Studio's easy-to-use visual tools and wizards
for application assembly enable a variety of personnel
from both IT and business functions to create new composite
applications without requiring any programming. With refined
components available and interoperability relationships
pre-defined, the Application Dictionary repository hides
the technical complexities of the underlying systems so
that assemblers can focus on the business need of the
composite application.
Above All Studio 1.0 is available immediately.
About DEMO 2004
The annual DEMO 2004 conference focuses
on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected
by executive producer Chris Shipley from across the technology
marketplace. The DEMO conference has earned its reputation
as the singular event that consistently identifies tomorrow's
leading edge technologies. Top executives from the leading
hardware and software technology companies, venture capitalists,
journalists from key industry publications and industry
analysts attend DEMO 2004 to preview the most promising
products and technologies for the coming year. For more
information, visit www.demo.com.
About Roger Sippl
Roger Sippl is the founder and CEO of
Above All Software. Over the past 25 years in Silicon
Valley, Roger has built an impressive track record of
founding, running, and investing in successful software
companies. He was founder of Informix Software, Inc. in
1980. Under his direction, Informix pioneered SQL relational
databases, 4GL application development tools, and OLTP
database technology. Roger was co-founder and chairman
of The Vantive Corporation, a CRM leader and successful
public company now part of PeopleSoft. He founded Visigenic
Software in 1993 and helped pioneer application servers
in enterprises. During the nineties, Sippl invested privately
in several successful software companies, including Illustra
(acquired by Informix), Broadvision, SupportSoft and Red
Pepper (acquired by PeopleSoft).
About Above All Software
Above All Software is based in San Mateo,
California and backed by a leading group of investors
that include Greylock, JPMorgan Partners, Granite Ventures,
Adobe and Sippl Macdonald Ventures.
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Press Contacts
Craig Priess
Above All Software
650.341.4600 ext. 105
Above All Studio 1.0 Delivers on the Promise of Service Oriented Architectures to Transform Both Application Development and Application Integration