Wakesoft Aims To Ease App Creation, Management

The product, Wakesoft Architecture Manager, will be part of the new release of Wakesoft's flagship offering, Wakesoft Architecture Server, scheduled to be available on June 17. Pricing for the product will be disclosed at that time, DeVries said.

Wakesoft Architecture Manager provides runtime management, configuration and deployment for J2EE apps after developers have created them, he said.

"The focus of the new product was to [automate a number of the jobs that people do after an app has been built," he said.

Developers typically must reprogram applications manually to configure them within a larger solution, DeVries said. Wakesoft Architecture Manager offers them a way to "manage the architecture, the structure and behavior of an app after it's deployed," he said.

J2EE has considerable momentum in the marketplace as a platform for building and deploying enterprise-scale Java applications and Web services, solution providers said. But J2EE is difficult for basic Java developers to navigate, making it cost-prohibitive for smaller companies, they said.

"There's a lot of structure that, in general, needs to be established in a J2EE application, and the J2EE API doesn't provide that for you," said Chris Lininger, senior consultant at Cardinal Solutions, a Cincinnati-based solution provider.

Wakesoft Architecture Server "saves a lot of effort in terms of not having to build that architecture," since it provides a standard J2EE architecture that developers can use to build applications, Lininger said.

Wakesoft's offering currently runs on leading J2EE app servers, including BEA Systems' WebLogic 5.1 and 6.1, IBM's WebSphere 4.0, the JBoss open-source app server, and the Oracle9i Application Server.