Regardless of platform, enterprises are looking to build and deploy applications faster and more easily. Vendors are hearing this plea and are responding with tools that strip the complexity out of development.

But what’s driving the application development cycle is changing. Integration of disparate systems using Web services is becoming a deciding factor for the kind of applications being developed. This has altered the value proposition for developer tools, says David Senf, analyst with IDC Canada in Toronto.

“Web services plays a key role in that shift,” says Senf.

“Web services is driving evolution of the tools,” agrees Frances Newbigin, regional manager for Sun ONE Canada.

Tools such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio.Net and Sun’s new Rave initiative are about making development simpler and helping developers become more productive.

“There’s a commoditization going on and standardization going on throughout the software industry, and that is leading to plug-and-play application components,” says Senf. “The simpler it is for a developer to manipulate the language, the easier it will be to get developers to develop for that language, whether it’s in .Net or in J2E. That will determine which platform has more applications written for it.”

Some elements of development haven’t changed in 15 years, says Newbigin, such as reuse, flexibility and integration.

“That’s what Web services is about,” she says. “No one can argue about the benefits of those things or the need to deliver inside enterprises when there’s such complexity.”

At Java One this year, Sun Microsystems announced Project Rave, a tool geared toward corporate Java developers. Rave is designed to reach those in the enterprise who are tasked with designing applications, but aren’t necessarily classically trained developers, says Jeff Anders, group marketing manager for developer tools at Sun.

“There is a huge opportunity to build a tool for developers that fit that description,” he says.

Montréal-based Silver Leap Technologies focuses on making development simpler and faster on the J2E platform. Its ACES for J2EE is an integrated software engineering system for Web-based application development, working in conjunction with the Java/J2EE tools and frameworks. It includes all the tools and components needed to build J2EE Web-based applications.

Kelly Ramsay, vice-president of corporate development at Silver Leap, says there is a tremendous amount of migration going on in its large enterprise customer base from older technologies, such as a mainframe environment.

“That’s driving the porting or the development of new enterprise applications,” he says. “Overall we’ve seen very mixed environments.”

Chris Corey, GM for Borland Canada, says customers are confronted with having investments in legacy technology, “and the cost of abandoning that technology and reinventing the wheel is prohibitive, so they need a cost-effective and efficient way to build upon it, improve upon it and leverage what they already have.”

Enterprises also have to deal with new choices, he adds, and “whether they’re going to use .Net or J2EE is probably the most prevalent example today. Many customers have not chosen the platform path they are going to go down, or are conceding they may have to have a little bit of both.”

Speed of development is also becoming an important issue, says Corey.

The Credential Group of Vancouver, a family of companies that allows credit unions to provide mutual funds and other securities for investment accounts, was in a position where it had just 90 days to rebuild it’s Credential Direct Web site, which serves brokers and dealers.

“We built this solution just more than a year ago,” says Drew Carmichael, Credential’s manager of online strategy. “We have been with Merrill-Lynch, who got bought by CIBC, and we basically had to change our back-office. We had 90 days to turn around and develop a new site.”

With the help of local firm Habanero using VisualStudio.Net, Credential built, deployed and tested the new site within the time frame. But ongoing support of the site has been just as important, says Carmichael.

“New releases of the product are much easier with .Net in terms of not having DLL conflicts,” he says. “That has certainly made a big difference in my ongoing upkeep of the site, to know that if we do make a change to the site, I can literally take the site down and replace the site wholesale in less than 30 seconds.”

Originally published in Computing Canada, August 22, 2003, Vol. 29 No. 16

Though its name may have changed, Allstream is still the right fit for Canada’s fastest growing airline.

Calgary-based WestJet has renewed a relationship with the company formerly known as AT&T Canada with a two-year, $4-million contract for a range of telecommunications services. Allstream will continue to provide data, Internet and long distance voice services to the national airline.

While cost was a factor for WestJet, culture was too, says Rosanna Imbrogno, director of customer service.

“They fit WestJet very well,” she says. “We are a unique culture and we need someone who understands what our culture is and how we drive our business model.”

The company has already been with WestJet for four years, and while the airline felt it was time to take a quick look to see what other vendors could offer, it made sense for WestJet to stay with Allstream for another two years, says Imbrogno.

“We didn’t feel it necessary to move away from Allstream,” she says. “We partnered up with someone who understands us.”

Keeping costs low is what keeps WestJet competitive, says Imbrogno, “and we innovate like crazy. You have to have an entrepreneur in you to do that.” WestJet sees the same qualities in Allstream.

Among the services provided by Allstream is its high-speed network that connects between WestJet’s head office, data centres, hangars and call centre facilities. WestJet serves 26 cities across Canada, and employs 3,500 people, 2,000 of whom work in customer service, an area Imbrogno says sees a great deal of benefit from the Allstream relationship.

“We’re doing more and more sales on the Internet,” she says. Currently, 65 per cent of bookings are done online, and WestJet expects that to increase, which pushes the call centre to become a more rounded contact centre, says Imbrogno. “We’re going to have to use different technology. (Allstream) has people in their organization who understand call centres very well.”

Imbrogno says it made sense to only sign a two-year deal with Allstream since WestJet is rapidly changing. While WestJet is evolving, focused on innovation and cost-conscious, says Imbrogno, it’s not looking to lead the technology. Voice over IP, she says, is still not something WestJet is willing to embrace.

“No one’s really perfected it yet,” she says.

One leading edge technology that has aided WestJet, says Imbrogno, is ResponseTek, which enables the airline to gather feedback from its customers.

The deal with WestJet is Allstream’s first major customer win since its rebranding two months, says David Grixti, Allstream’s sales vice-president, Western Region, and in terms of size and scope is one of its top 100 customers.

WestJet’s potential to bring more revenue and business to Allstream is significant, he says. “It opens up opportunities to expand the network. WestJet is growing and expanding the cities they fly into and we are growing with them.”

AT&T Canada relaunched itself as Allstream in June to reposition itself as a national provider of connectivity, infrastructure management and IT services. The name change follows AT&T Canada’s successful debt restructuring plan last April.

Original printed in Computing Canada, August 8, 2003, Vol. 29 No. 15