By John Geralds, VNU
Net
Inprise/Borland, which recently abandoned attempts to merge with
Corel, is refocusing from its traditional development language
market to the more lucrative ecommerce software arena.
At its annual developers conference this week, the company
rolled out its Ecommerce Framework Solution, a set of software and
consulting services aimed at helping small to mid-sized businesses
set up ecommerce websites.
Written in Java, the application includes a firewall broker to
manage security, a partition service for handling multiple clients
from a single hosting facility, and a service that automatically
loads correct languages. A cart facility provides temporary storage
of shopping items while a membership service manages log-ins and
user preferences.
Kevin Cornell, Inprise/Borland’s vice president and general
manager, said: “The extendible framework provides all common
services, and offers the ability to adapt to changing ecommerce
needs without rendering obsolete the functioning application.”
The company also announced that it will make available a version
of its JBuilder Java development environment for Apple’s
next-generation operating system, Mac OS X. It will also support
the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition.
Inprise/Borland will also include support for applications
based on the open source Apache Server in its forthcoming Linux
developer toolset, codenamed Kylix. The toolset is scheduled to be
available later this year, and will be aimed at creating
applications for Windows and Linux.
The company had planned to merge with struggling Canadian
software firm Corel to create a ‘Linux powerhouse’, but the deal
was called off in May as Corel tried to resolve its financial
troubles.