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 NEWSStartup eyes XML management, monitoring By Tom Sullivan August 25, 2002 6:44 pm PT A PORTSMOUTH, N.H.-BASED startup is looking to carve a place for itself among the growing swirls of XML within organizations.
The very name connotes its founders' belief that a shift is taking place in which the proverbial programming tide is flowing decidedly away from traditional applications straight toward XML-based services. "The fundamental purpose for which we founded Swingtide is to manage and monitor the growth of XML within the enterprise," Sweet said. "We are seeing a proliferation of XML." But not everyone sees XML exploding right how. "To say XML is growing like crazy, that's a bit of a rosy picture. There' not as much proliferation of XML content as we might have expected there to be a year ago," said Tyler McDaniel, an analyst with consultancy Hurwitz Group, based in Framingham, Mass. "A big reason for that is because companies have retrenched to make the most out of what they already have." McDaniel explained that in the next few years, XML will continue to become increasingly more important, just not in the immediate timeframe. "As we have more development [taking] place, XML will be the way it happens. There is not much doubt about that," he added. Swingtide is also addressing what Sweet called QoB, or Quality of Business. Whereas QoS (Quality of Service) concerns itself with the physical network management, such as speed and performance, availability, and ROI, QoB examines the aspects of "logical" network management, such as the customer experience, XML service traction and related revenue growth, and what Sweet called Return on Assets. A big part of QoB is to make sure that XML from various applications and sources is interoperable, much the way companies do with applications themselves. "Ensuring interoperability is critical to the success of XML. If you have that interoperability, it will improve the quality of your e-business," Sweet said. Almost by default, Swingtide will support Web services in its products when they eventually come to market, but Sweet said the company is tackling more than just Web services. "The problem [of XML management] is bigger than just Web services. It has to do with workflow, it has to do with transactions," Sweet said. Swingtide's founders are no strangers to XML and the world of Web services. CEO Sweet, in fact, previously started two other companies with co-founder and chairman Jack Serfass Web services company Bowstreet, and Preferred Systems, which was sold to Computer Associates. The final piece of the co-founder triptych is David Wroe, who brings more than thirty years experience in the financial services and insurance industries. In roles prior to Swingtide, Wroe served as CTO of commercial insurer CNA, and CEO of Agency Management Services. Sweet also spent the first half of his career as a venture capitalist, and that aspect of his personality emerged just a bit. "It's a very different environment now than it was before the bubble burst, but in some ways it's even more exciting to be bringing together a core group for a startup now," he said. Tom Sullivan is an InfoWorld senior editor. SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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