Progress Software Opens Up to AS/400
In preparation for the AS/400 debut of its Open AppServer tool for component-based application partitioning, Progress Software Corp. (Bedford, Mass.) has announced an expanded development and marketing partnership with IBM.
This expanded partnership is expected to facilitate the distribution of Open AppServer to the AS/400 market when the product becomes available during the first quarter of 2000. Already an integrated application server for both Progress 4GL Version 9 and WebSpeed 3 Web-based applications on Windows NT and Unix, Progress Open AppServer forms a middle tier between an application's user interface and its back-end data.
"In order to be successful in the AS/400 arena, you need to have a strong relationship with IBM," says Chris Kandianis, strategic relations manager for Progress Software. "That's been our whole objective, to strengthen that relationship with IBM so that all of our partners who have AS/400-based applications can enjoy more success in that arena."
The availability of Open AppServer will enable Progress customers, for example, to develop warehousing and distribution applications with more flexible deployments that consolidate the application server and offload the client, according to Kandianis. "You're offloading the client," she says. "Right now, there is a lot of processing business logic on the client in order to run these applications. With AppServer, you're unloading some of this business logic onto the server. What we're getting at actually is to put more of the processing power onto the AS/400."
--L. Greenemeier