Windows 2000 Enables New Companies, Products

One of the interesting things a person would find at the Windows 2000 conference and announcement, held here this week, is new companies with new products that take advantage of the new capabilities in the operating system (OS).

A good example is Radiant Logic, (www.radiantlogic.com) a startup based in Novato, Calif. Nigel Hall, director of product marketing, says that his first and only product, which is still in Beta at this time, extends the capabilities of Active Directory. And, he claims, we'll see more products like his, because Active Directory in an LDAP 3-enabled application. "LDAP will just mushroom," says Hall, "when Active Directory is out there." He points out that Novell's NDS, which does not have LDAP 3 capability, could not cause such an explosion. Active Directory can.

Hall's Virtual Directory Server extends the capabilities of Active Directory, in effect, writing SQL calls to the database behind the Active Directory. The advantage is that this product is much easier to use and to modify than the basic Active Directory, Hall claims.

The product will be sold through resellers, systems integrators and Web integrators, Hall says, "We're a startup," he notes. "We'll sell to whomever wants to buy." But the company is in the process of actively seeking partners.

Virtual Directory Server will cost $50,000 for the server with 3,000 concurrent connections. A development version, with fewer connections will go for $10,000.

Hall's not alone. Try Web Putty (www.webputty.com) which bills itself as a startup although it's been in business since 1996 as an ERP vendor. "We found out that there are very few good tools for doing ERP," says James Beldock, president and CEO, "so we decided to change our model and produce some."

Beldock, who was personally running a demo of the product for the crowd at his booth ("We're a startup-we do everything," he says) explains that his product allows developers to make use of the capabilities of the Microsoft Transaction Server, a capability that company touts as an e-business enabler, but use the service through any browser. Indeed, throughout the demo, Beldock was able to build tables of inventory and customer data for a mythical company, and modify them merely using a browser. Modifications and updates were accomplished through drop-down lists and menu items, rather than through writing code that could be used by SQL Server (the back-end processor involved in the application) or Microsoft Transaction Server. Beldock said that the changes he made in roughly 30 minutes would take a week using conventional methods.

Web Putty will also sell its products through solution providers, as soon as its available, which should happen in about a month. There will be three pricing models: development, deployment and hosting. But firm pricing hasn't been set.