Software AG to offer XML services packages

Software AG, Darmstadt, Germany, has begun offering a new set of services aimed at enterprisewide data integration tasks, said William Ruh, senior vice president for professional services for Software AG Americas.

The offering bundles Software AG products with a set of services to help integrators use the extensible markup language to trade data among multiple systems. Integrators can use the tools to build metadata repositories, or information about data that allows it to be shared or used in unusual ways.

The company sees two initial markets in the government space, Ruh said. One is for first responders. An integrator can fashion a system using XML to send alerts to appropiate parties by e-mail, cell phone or pager.

A second market would be for pension benefit systems. Software AG points to work it has done for the state of California that allows retirees seeking pension information to use e-mail rather than the telephone. Formerly, the state would have to mail each state retiree a detailed summary of benefits; now that information can be sent by e-mail.

A coordinated set of services and products can cost an integrator from the low hundreds of thousands of dollars to $1 million or more, Ruh said.

In the past few years, Software AG has shifted its focus from providing databas software to providing XML tools. Clients of its database products include the Defense Department, FBI, Government Printing Office and NASA.