SHARE

Stuck in the middle with who?

After expending a lot of hard work trying to figure out what the heck middleware can do for them, IT managers now have much more than routine customer service on their minds as they dive into middleware installations. Juggling tricky implementations and struggling to find integration expertise, users of middleware–the glue that allows disparate applications […]

Written By

Deborah Asbrand

Jun 1, 1999

5 minute read

Datamation content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More

After expending a lot of hard work trying to figure out what the heck middleware can do for them, IT managers now have much more than routine customer service on their minds as they dive into middleware installations.

Juggling tricky implementations and struggling to find integration expertise, users of middleware–the glue that allows disparate applications to work together–are tough on vendors. For more mature technologies, packaged customer service and support are part of the purchase. But for emerging technologies like middleware, customer needs are more free-form, and customers need to tell vendors what kind of support is required.

While a few established middleware vendors such as Active Software Inc., BEA Systems Inc., and TIBCO Software Inc. field full-fledged support efforts, many of their rivals are just starting to think about formal programs. And many users don’t mind.

“Users are grappling with just what to do with middleware, so the service aspect seems less critical,” says John Mann, a senior consultant and analyst for Patricia Seybold Group in Boston. “They’re more interested in management. If you have an order-entry system, you need to fix it within seconds, ” he says.

“Middleware issues mostly deal with some kind of bottleneck, and you need to understand: Is it a design problem or is it the product itself?” So when it comes to crucial architecture issues, the best support is from those who know your system intimately.

What does help is staying in close touch, whether in person or by phone or e-mail, with the vendor’s engineers and other technical staff. When it comes to crucial architecture issues, the best support comes from those who know your system intimately.

Enron Energy Services, a division of the energy company Enron Corp., uses Iona Technologies’ Orbix object request broker as the backbone for its distributed applications platform. Enron Energy runs critical applications such as billing on the system. In addition to a maintenance agreement, Enron Energy has a consulting contract with Iona and regularly has half a dozen engineers working on site.

The consultants’ familiarity with Enron’s systems needs makes all the difference in tweaking the system and keeping it running smoothly. “Middleware issues mostly deal with some kind of bottleneck, and you need to understand: Is it a design problem or is it the product itself?” says Mohammad Fahim, senior vice president and CIO for the Houston company.

Kohl’s Department Stores in Menomonee Falls, Wis., has 270 retail stores and opens a new one every four and a half days on average. Kohl’s uses Insession Inc. ICE (Intersystem Communications Environment) to keep store communications running glitch-free over the company’s Tandem mainframe. Insession has provided consistent support, says Kohl’s IT manager Stacy England, showing up on site to help with problems and providing custom solutions. He has also used telephone support and opened problem accounts when needed.

A SAMPLING OF MIDDLEWARE VENDORS

Active Software Inc.
BEA Systems Inc.
Information Builders Inc.
Insession Inc.
Iona Technologies PLC
Microsoft Corp.
New Era of Networks Inc.(NEON)
NobleNet Inc.
TIBCO Inc.

(Note: This list is not all-inclusive)

England keeps renewing his maintenance commitment and is now set for the next two years or so. But, England says, “I’m pretty hard on them as far as pricing… I didn’t want to pay the standard book price upfront.” He doesn’t. Insession has discounted maintenance prices on Kohl’s production, development, and testing machines, says England.

In the end, no one knows a system better than the team that installed it. So some middleware customers say they solve their problems more speedily by sifting through vendors’ online help databases than by telephoning tech support and discussing the problem with an anonymous service rep. Al San Clemente, chief technology officer for Web Technology Partners, a Lowell, Mass., systems integrator, has installed Iona Technologies middleware for several clients and says he answers 90 percent of his questions using Iona’s knowledge database, available free on its Web site.

“It’s a really valuable tool for dweeby stuff, like how to configure your servers to time out and exit the event loop after a certain amount of time,” says San Clemente. “Our servers were exhibiting that set of activities, and I typed in one or two key words and found out exactly what was going on. It’s absolutely faster” than dialing a help line, he says. //

Deborah Asbrand is a Boston-based writer who focuses on information technology. She can be reached at dasbrand@world.std.com.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality

FEATURE | By James Maguire,
December 16, 2020
AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning

FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
December 11, 2020
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
Top 10 AIOps Companies

FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
What is Text Analysis?

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
Finding a Career Path in AI

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021

FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020

SEE ALL
APPLICATIONS ARTICLES

DATAMATION DAILY NEWSLETTER

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR IT MANAGEMENT NEWSLETTER

Most Recent
Applications Articles

An eWEEK Property

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.