by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
Simply put, integration is the term for making disparate computer systems talk to each other.
It happens — and must happen — whenever two or more companies want to engage in e-business. Think of an online marketplace like Amazon.com. They are feeding thousands of orders back-and-fourth from customers to suppliers to Federal Express, constantly. When they land a new business partner — perhaps a compact disc manufacturer in Asia — then the two companies must integrate their systems, an expensive and time-consuming, but critical procedure, that allows the whole operation to work.
Object Innovation, a Baymeadows company founded three years ago by John Grow, who is from Silicon Valley and, as an independent information technology consultant, tackled such networking projects as the cardiology center at Stamford University and the trading floor at JP Morgan on Wall Street, has developed technology that it says will almost entirely truncate the time and expense involved in integration.
“There are over 900 different standards based on XML alone,” said Grow, referring to Extensive Makeup Language, a popular computer programming language that is only one piece in the overall programming universe. “The old way was for one of the big consulting firm s like Deloitte & Touche to send in analysts for months at a time to dissect each system and then figure out a way to connect them.”
But not any more. Object Innovation has developed software called BridgeGate, which translates incoming and outgoing data and adapts it to the requirements of each company or application involved in the process. If their patent-pending technology takes off, it will revolutionize what Grow and other techies are calling the “Age of the Integrators.”
The concept for BridgeGate emerged when Grow and Scott Sirdevan, the president and chief technical officer for Object Innovation, were working in-house for SkyMall, the catalog you find on airplanes that consists of an amalgam of products from other catalogs like Sharper Image and Brookstone.
SkyMall had hired Grow and Sirdevan to develop its e-commerce platform, which consisted of connecting (or integrating) computer systems from hundreds of different shops, both online and off. Based in New York during the height of the dot-com boom, the two almost accidentally discovered that the algorithm they were writing to solve SkyMall’s problem could be applied to every computer language.
Today, their proprietary technology fueled by Object Innovation has clients like TV Guide Interactive and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
To understand the power of what Object Innovation has, it’s important to understand just how massive integration projects can be. Sometimes costing millions of dollars — take Compaq and Hewlett Packard for example — consultants not only have the task of converging different systems, they sometimes spend months training IT staff on the individual systems before they even begin the task of putting them together. And with a company like SkyMall that does e-business with lots of businesses, the job can be, well, difficult.
Grow said he thinks the most obvious clients for BridgeGate are the Home Depots and Wal-Marts of the world — companies that have multiple suppliers all needing to talk to each other. Of course, the United States Government has been receiving a little flak recently for a lack of communication. Object Innovation is talking to them as well.
Grow and Sirdevan met when they were working in the applied architecture division of Bank of America in Jacksonville. It was later that they were tapped to create the e-commerce initiative for SkyMall. Sirdevan, who has a master’s degree in computer science and has worked in the telecommunications industry for Bell Labs, had discussed independent consulting with Grow when the SkyMall opportunity emerged.
As Object Innovation grew out of SkyMall, BridgeGate has grown out of Object Innovation. Now Grow must decide the best way to market technology that could save companies millions and propel a new wave of rapid corporate convergence.
“Until now we’ve been focused on linear growth,” he said. “trying to get one client at a time. Now all of a sudden we’ve got to consider exponential growth and talk about forming a separate strategy around BridgeGate.”
One mechanism for growth would be for Object Innovation to market BridgeGate directly to the Integrators, a strategy that they concede would probably lead to an acquisition. They are also meeting with venture capitalists to discuss further funding options, which if successful, would kickstart an aggressive sales and marketing initiative.
But the team at Object Innovation knows they are onto something.
“Say you’re Home Depot,” said Sirdevan. “Your system is talking to hundreds of other systems, sending out parts requests and invoice requests to computers that all have their own, distinct systems. Some are sent via e-mail, some are uploaded from your website, some have a direct database connection.”
With BridgeGate, he argues, Home Depot and each of its business partners would have automatically compatible systems by just downloading their software.
“There would still be quality assurance, of course,” he said. “But this can turn projects that take months into projects that take minutes.”