Waltham, MA May 23, 2001 It's not enough to simply automate business processes anymore. Major technology users, and information technology (IT) manager in particular, are voicing an increasingly urgent need to integrate business-critical systems, which will be the genesis of new middleware a new generation of connectivity software that could soon be worth $15 billion per year.
According to Kinetic Information, a business intelligence agency that focuses on the sale and use of information technology, the so-called new middleware products will be the answer to IT's pleas for connectivity, which company research consistently reveals to be one of the top barriers to implementation. Particular targets include enterprise resource planning (ERP); customer relationship management (CRM); and Web-based applications, which Kinetic believes to be of the utmost importance as large-scale technology users seek to squeeze more value from their existing implementations.
New middleware offerings will not only let large IT organizations bridge their technology islands, but they will be injected with process intelligence so the technical integration can be done in lockstep with the work that must actually get done, said Kinetic Information president Steve Weissman. Organizations can do this today, but not without buying a lot of expensive services. We expect savvy integration service providers to soon wake up to the fact that what they are doing is in great demand, and to begin selling packaged tools in enough volume to create a whole new market category.
