Web services start-up revamps

Start-up Systinet on Monday named a new chief executive, introduced a product designed to expand its reach in the market for Web services tools and renamed its product lineup.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company said it has named Tom Erickson, formerly the head of international operations at integration software company WebMethods, as the company's new CEO. Company founder and former CEO Roman Stanek has been tapped as Systinet's chief strategy officer.

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Systinet also added to its lineup a Web services gateway designed to help integrate existing systems and introduced enhancements to its existing software development products. In addition, it dropped its WASP brand and will simply use the company's moniker instead.

The company makes software for writing and deploying business applications with Web services, a set of protocols and methods for allowing software components to more easily share information.

The expanded product set, new CEO, and fresh round of $10.6 million in venture capital from investor Warburg Pincus are meant to help Systinet scale up its sales, marketing and distribution operations, said Wendell Lansford, chief operating officer of Systinet.

"We think the market is moving from where vendors are trying to push products...to where enterprise (customers) are pulling technology into market," Lansford said.

On Monday, the company introduced Systinet Gateway, server software designed act as a bridge between Web services applications and integration software from companies such as Tibco Software, WebMethods and SeeBeyond Technology. With the new software gateway, corporate developers can write new applications that take advantage of integration software already installed, Lansford said.

The company also released a product update. Systinet UDDI Registry 5.0, which was previously called WASP UDDI, incorporates support for version 3 of the Universal Description Discovery Integration (UDDI) standard. The change is designed to improve the ability of a software programmer to search in a repository of Web services.

Systinet also added an enhancement to its Systinet Server for Java, previously called WASP Server for Java, which provides services such as failover and database access to Java applications. The update includes support for the Web Services Reliable Messaging specification, which ensures the delivery of information between two systems.