FRAMINGHAM (02/17/2000) - Major Web-to-host vendors are all singing the same tune: Future products are going to become more secure, work faster, be more Web-friendly and enable e-business like never before. Vendors such as IBM Corp., Attachmate Corp., OpenConnect and WRQ Inc. are working to bolster their software packages by adding features that will enable centralized management, easier access to legacy applications via the Web, and integration with handheld and mobile devices.
Players in the Web-to-host software arena - which includes everything from tn3270 packages, screen scraping applications and HTML publishing - are in a growing market but will need to adapt to a new set of e-commerce demands if they are going to continue being successful in the future.
In 1998, revenue for the Web-to-host market grew by 368 percent, reaching a size of $112.4 million and an installed base of one million licenses in the U.S., says Cindy Borovick, analyst with IDC, a consultancy in Framingham, Mass.
The market should reach $1.2 billion by 2003.
Vendors that have a clear migration path for their customers from basic host access to browser-based clients will do the best, Borovick says. With 20 percent of the market, the industry leader is OpenConnect, followed by IBM with 19.8 percent and Attachmate with 18 percent.
Despite some recent consolidation - NetManage's purchase of host access provider Wall Data and Computer Associates' buyout of Sterling Software - there are still plenty of smaller competitors out there, such as Farabi, WRQ, FutureSoft, Ericom and Anota.
What used to be
In the past, many companies looking to open up their applications to the Net were content with host printing, running tn3270 or tn5250 sessions, or doing screen scraping, which involves grabbing the readout off of a terminal screen and putting it into a graphical user interface format. These applications were primarily for a company, usually a bank or insurance firm, that wanted to make the data available quickly for internal users.
But over the next few years, the majority of Web-to-host users are going to need remote access, Borovick says; they will be mobile users, business partners or potential retail customers. For example, by 2003 only 34 percent of the revenue for the Web-to-host market will be for intranet-access products, down from 69 percent today.
The No. 1 issue in adding remote access for customers or mobile workers is security, according to Doug Piner, Web site manager at the North Carolina State Treasury. Piner, an IBM customer, has 50 state agencies accessing data from his department's servers. Whenever a vendor pitches a Web-to-host product, the first thing to discuss is security, Piner says.
"These Web-enabled applications have to have a fairly secure common front end or it's going to become a nightmare for people to log on," he says. "Once security is handled, everything else is very doable."
Meeting that requirement means increasing support for features such as encryption and authentication. For instance, IBM, which already offers Secure Sockets Layer technology on its clients, will be adding authentication support to its Communications Server products for centralized management. Other vendors will be adding Triple-Data Encryption Standard and possibly even IP Security to their lineups, IDC's Borovick says.
In addition to having strong security in place, there is also the need to make the download time to clients shorter, she says. For instance, IBM is rolling out a software product called Transcoding that promises to shrink Web data so it can load and run faster on handheld devices.
E-business requires integrating Web applications with multiple back-end servers and to their legacy databases. For instance, a user might have to take a Web front end, attach it to a database to offer a product catalog service and then add transaction software to conduct online sales, says OpenConnect executive Bruce Parker.
This means Web-to-host companies need to supply integration tool kits, such as Visual Basic, so their users can give these applications an even more Web-like look and feel.
"One question users all have, is, 'Can we make this not look like a 5250 screen?'" says Diego Alfarache, manager of technical services at ICOM Informatics, an Austin, Texas, Web-to-host vendor. "Within a year or so, you'll have a lot of people with fancy front ends."
Wireless connectivity
A number of vendors, including WRQ and OpenConnect, are also trying to extend their Web-to-host lines to handle connectivity for devices such as Palms or personal digital assistants. For instance, WRQ is rolling out Reflection for the Web, a Java-based access product that will connect mobile wireless users and business partners to a host.
On the other hand, OpenConnect actually announced a mobile product line called WalkAbout - but got such little response the company never bothered manufacturing it. OpenConnect is now trying to decide if it makes sense to reintroduce WalkAbout.
But if the handheld market takes off, Web-to-host gateways will also have to be able to handle protocols such as Wireless Access Protocol, a specification for letting non-PC devices handle Net data.
And to handle all this increased activity, vendors want to make Web-to-host systems manageable from a central location. Clients will be managed using some sort of directory - for example, WRQ's Reflection software has been tweaked to work with Microsoft's Active Director.
Also in that vein, OpenConnect plans to add single sign-on capabilities for users, as well single, centralized access control.
There is also some good news for customers, according to IDC's Borovick: By 2003, the cost for end-user Web-to-host licenses will drop, on average, to $50, down from $80 in 1998.