CrossRoute: New name, new aim
CrossRoute Software, now called Extricity, is making a run to lead the software integration market with the help of investments.
The firm makes "adapters" that can be plugged into different enterprise applications to allow companies with different enterprise resource planning systems to communicate with each other. It faces competition from a wide range of companies, but David Cope, the firm's vice president of marketing, pointed to EDI systems or internal custom development as chief competitors.
In an effort to set itself apart, the company is changing its name to Extricity.
"We have the ability to integrate disparate application portfolios, getting them to work together as one," Cope said. Extricity's technology includes "integration adapters" to tie enterprise resource planning systems together but also tools for companies to integrate other applications or internal applications to each other.
Although only the investments were announced today, Extricity is working with the enterprise resource planning companies and others to integrate their applications with the Extricity system.
The Intel deal includes a commitment to port CrossRoute's technology to Intel's IA-64 architecture as well as comarketing activities with Intel. In addition, a fourth unnamed investor, described only as a European enterprise resource planning software vendor, but strongly rumored to be market leader SAP, invested in the round, which brings total funds raised to $18.5 million since Extricity was launched.
The investment from Baan and possibly SAP makes sense given the current state of the enterprise resource planning market. Enterprise resource planning vendors are pushing their systems as the backbone of corporate computing environments. So as users begin accepting that idea, they are demanding that enterprise resource planning vendors make it both easier to integrate other applications to those backbones and easier to link those systems to the systems used by trading partners, customers, and suppliers. So Baan, SAP, and others may start turning to enterprise application integration software vendors like Extricity for such tasks.
Laura Ferrell, Extricity's vice president of engineering, said that in about a month the company will introduce new "adapters" for linking applications as well as improved tools for customers to create their own adapters.
In addition, Cope said, the next version of the company's Alliance line will let users utilize Web browsers to access applications.