ATG Thinks Forward

The Web commerce, CRM and portal vendor, based here, this week plans to unveil a road map extending into 2003 that groups its software lineup under a new product family, dubbed ATG6, and adds an integration offering.

ATG6 will include updates of ATG's Commerce, Relationship Management Platform and Portal solutions, including new publishing, analytics and search capabilities for all of the products. Also falling under the ATG6 banner is ATG Integration, a new integration solution designed to help solution providers tie ATG products into customers' back-end systems.

The ATG6 offerings provide more extensive functionality and, because they're packaged as solutions, open the door for ATG to lure larger customers, said Fumi Matsumoto, vice president of technology at ATG.

"In the past, customers were happy buying these individual modules from various vendors," Matsumoto said. "Now our customers want a single source for all these products. So [ATG6 makes it really attractive."

ATG6 rounds out ATG's platform and makes life easier for solution providers and end users, said Tom McFadyen, president of McFadyen Consulting,

a Vienna, Va.-based ATG partner.

"With other vendors, you'd have to pick from a bunch of different vendors to get a solution, and go out and create the code yourself," he said. "ATG now has as close to out-of-the-box solutions as you can get, and that makes it a much smoother solution."

McFadyen said his company is participating in ATG6 training and development seminars and is slated to participate in the ATG6 beta program in the next few weeks.

ATG plans to release the ATG6 solutions by the end of the year, according to Matsumoto. Also in that time frame, the vendor aims to add enhanced fraud-protection features, along with support for BEA Systems' WebLogic and Siebel Systems products. In the first quarter of 2003, ATG plans to unveil more enhancements and support for other vendors' products, such as those from SAP and IBM's WebSphere software, he said.

ATG also has ramped up its channel program this year and plans to boost its channel-driven business, Matsumoto added. By the end of 2002, the vendor aims to hike indirect channel sales to 15 percent of the company's revenue from 5 percent currently.

In the longer term, it hopes to boost that number to 25 percent of total revenue, Matsumoto said.