Speedware Corp, the Toronto, Canada software house that started out in the proprietary HP 3000 world, has adapted its proprietary language technology to the Internet. Speedware Autobahn, introduced at Networld/Interop in Atlanta, enables programmers to create dynamic World Wide Web applications where information posted to the page changes as the facts change. It can be used for such applications as stock market listings, sports results or how-to-order information on home pages. Autobahn sticks with the HyperText Mark-up Language standard and supports current browsers such as Netscape Navigator and NCSA Mosaic. SpeedWare reckons it provides an alternative to the esoteric scripting languages and C code offered by other products. Speedware has basically embedded HyperText Mark-up Language onto its existing Speedware proprietary language which, over the last few years, has been selling under HP-UX, AIX and, more recently, Solaris. The product is most likely to appeal to those who already have a proprietary language mind-set: Speedware claims to have interested its first Internet provider in Australia and hopes to set up similar deals in the near future. It will also target companies using Internet tools on internal networks, and will be selling from the Net. The Autobahn server can be installed on Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc machines, as well as Windows NT, and can access data from Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2/6000, and HP Allbase database management systems. Speedware reported $28m revenues in fiscal 1994, but a $1.5m net loss, although it claims to be heading back to profit this year. Earlier this year it acquired a Quebec-based company, Info Innov Inc, from which it got a client-server executive information system tool called Media. The company’s other product is Oasis, a middleware tool that enables Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, Excel and Delphi users to bypass Open Database Connectivity and uses Distributed Computing Environment to connect up to Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc servers. Pricing and packaging issues are still being sorted out.
