Middleware-on-demand

The growing population of software using web standards is creating its own demand for integration - on-demand apps talking to other on-demand apps, and/or to private apps running behind a firewall, and/or private apps talking to each other. So what have you, a couple of flavors of what I'd call 'middleware on-demand' from a couple of software companies. Each with a different offering, yet interesting to compare from a product marketing perspective.

One bay area startup, Grand Central Communications, provides its integration services via a hosted software model. They like to call it 'Integration On Demand', and the company's name itself comes from a big railway routing junction. Another start-up, Cast Iron Systems, literally provides integration out-of-the-box with a bunch of software - integration server, XML server, apps connectors, and master data management tools - all pre-loaded on a linux-based appliance. They like to call it an 'Application Router' (..and don't ask me how or why their company name came about!).

Its notable that their core products - pre-built connectors for apps integration - essentially do exactly the same thing. They move data and instructions from one software program to another. I can't claim to have seen either product, but am certain each is unique about how it looks and feels, its overall user experience.

What is interesting however, as an observer of their marketing pitch, is how each ones business and offering stand out from the crowd. For analogy, think electricity and battery packs. Tap water and bottled water. Piped gas and butane cylinders. Phone service and EPABX machine. Each so different, yet so alike. One comes out-of-the-pipe, the other out-of-the-box.

Each of these integration products has the same fundamentally attractive appeal to the same buyer need. Its about reducing the cost, time and risk of making different software applications talk to each other. Both bring a plug-and-play sort of value prop to the software integration problem, offering to solve what is essentially a big hairy problem for software buyers.

And ofcourse, both have some wit around their branding as well...like a railway routing junction, application router...whatever. Hey, go ahead and call the rose anything you want to, as long as it smells sweet!

10/18/2005: Update - The similarities don't end. A buddy who works with Iron Cast tells me that both companies I wrote about above actually had the same VP of Engineering at different points of time.