Sterling and Relativity join forces to push legacy data online

Sterling Software's Application Development Group has today announced a joint venture with ecommerce specialist, Relativity Technologies, to help corporates transfer legacy data onto the Web.

According to the two companies, Legacy Mining will enable traditional 'brick-and-mortar' firms to renew existing mainframe applications and include them in new ebusiness architectures.

Companies are losing business advantage because knowledge contained in legacy systems is difficult to access, according to David Green, European VP of Relativity. "Although they have the knowledge it's deeply embedded. They need to take their business processes and make them available through more modern channels," he said.

Green claimed the market is being led by Web enablement. "Companies aren't going to make the investment in changing their infrastructure without a strong business driver - and that driver is the Internet."

He added that traditional companies must move quickly to catch up with their dot-com rivals, and exploiting legacy data could give them an added advantage. "They have the business processes in place already. They have scalability and reliability," said Green.

Sterling and Relativity's initial US customers include EDS, the State of Missouri, Humana Healthcare and Tier Technologies.

Relativity also today announced a multimillion dollar investment from the Intel 64 Fund. According to Green, the money will be used to expand the company's market position and develop a version of its RescueWare solution for Intel's IA64 product family.