Electronic Commerce company Connect Inc has beefed up its electronic software offerings and unveiled the Connect application workbench, an all-in-one software package for designing, developing, deploying and monitoring high-end web- based applications. Connect has fleshed out its offerings to cater for all stages of application deployment, and to provide fast implementation, by incorporating recognized standard software from Rational Software Corp, Marimba Inc and Cognos Inc. The deal also sees Rational and Cognos in particular raising their profile in the electronic commerce arena, as the companies seek to expand into the new market. The new release comprises five central components along with the existing Connect Template Engine. Connect Reporting and the Online Analytical Processing Tools are based on Cognos’ PowerPlay OLAP and Impromptu desktop reporting tools. The Connect Object Designer features extensions to Rational Software’s Rational Rose Visual Object Modeling Tool, designed to enable users to forward and reverse engineer applications based on Connect products and extend Connect business objects. Connect Ace is an application component environment based on Marimba’s Bongo Java-based visual interface builder. The Workbench also has Connect Reporting and Online Analytical Processing Tools based on Cognos’ PowerPlay OLAP and Impromptu desktop reporting tools. Other built in modules include the Operations Monitoring Console, designed to measure application performance and activities such as download times, and a Site Manager tool designed to enable users to modify electronic commerce applications through a one button process. Connect business development manager Brian Valente says the company went to Rational, Marimba and Cognos because we saw that these applications were doing a good job and users were familiar with them, basically we didn’t want to re-invent the wheel. The Connect Application Workbench is priced at $5,000 per application for an unlimited number of users. It’ll be available as an option on the releases of OrderStream 2.0 and OneServer 2.5, both due in September.