Database vendor launches app integration drive

Embedded database vendor InterSystems has launched a partner portal offering its Caché application partners extra developer, marketing and sales support, as part of an overall push into application integration.

InterSystems' new partner portal incorporates joint marketing opportunities, services such as free engineering resources and sales support, Caché database engine marketing tools and information about government support, business strategy and industry associations. Partners and their products will also be promoted on InterSystems' public website as part of the formal program.

Denis Tebbutt, managing director for InterSystems Australia, said the US-based vendor had signed 50 partners in the past two years, including 35 in the last 12 months, to develop and market InterSystems Caché-based applications. Caché combines SQL and an advanced object system in a post-relational database. The vendor opened its Australian office a year ago.

Tebbutt said he was serious about growing InterSystems' business via the channel. Revenues this year were expected to grow 43 percent, taking the company past US$150 million, in the year ending December 2003.

"Our go-to-market strategy is through application developers and their partners and 80 percent of our revenue comes from application developers," he said. "If our partners' business grows, then ours will as well."

InterSystems does not sell its own consulting services, so relies on partners making successful roll-outs of Caché-based applications.

Tebbutt said he hoped the partner portal would encourage Caché developer partners to target InterSystems' global customer base, partly by providing marketing and technical support. The vendor has operations in 19 countries.

The partner program had already harnessed 'a lot of creative' work done by business-partner developers in Russia on the website itself, he said.

Tebbutt added that vendors worldwide were starting to take their channel partners more seriously. "Most recently some have realised the need to change their partner strategies," he said.

While focus on end-users by specific vertical was critical, working with channel partners such as system integrators to solve end-user needs was increasingly important, he said.

"We want to grow our market-share as a result of our partners being successful," said Tebbutt.

This month the vendor also made a move into Australia's application integration market, launching a 'next generation' application integration platform dubbed Ensemble in Sydney on Monday, 3 November.

Tebbutt said the platform should also help partners strengthen opportunities available to them through InterSystems, backing up his claim with results of an InterSystems-sponsored survey of 270 Australian CIOs. Of that sample, 170 had responded, he said.

The survey's main finding was, unsurprisingly, that application integration to improve data use and knowledge availability was the way to go. "CIOs and senior management have got the message. They're looking to make more use of the data that is available to their organisations. They absolutely will be looking over the next couple of years to increase the level of integration of their applications," he said.

Tebbutt said Ensemble's strengths would stem from InterSystem's experience as a database supplier for corporations around the world, taking an 'object-centric database approach'. End-user and system integrator demonstrations of Ensemble will be held in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne mid-November, he said.