Idiom's version three hot on decision-making

By ADAM GIFFORD

Auckland start-up Idiom wants to change the rules on how software is developed and maintained.

After three years of development, the company has released version three of Idiom Decision Suite, a rules engine which identifies the points in an application where decisions need to be made.

This means rules can be changed more quickly because they are not hard-coded in, and multiple applications can use the same sets of rules.

"The traditional view of applications is data-centric and process-centric. We are decision-centric," said chief executive Mark Norton, who founded the company in 2001 after 25 years of developing systems in the financial services and insurance sector.

Norton said Idiom puts rules in a separate repository, which can work with any XML schema, now the standard way to describe data.

When the application reaches a decision point, it makes a call to the rules engine to find out what rules apply to that situation.

The software includes drag and drop type graphical techniques for developing decisions, formulas and schemas, so it can be used by business analysts and application users rather than being the preserve of programmers.

"The assumption is we are delegating rule-building back to the source of truth," Norton said.

At the same time it is generating Java, C++ or C

code, Idiom automatically produces plain English documentation of that code.

Customers have included insurance, health and finance companies which must constantly respond to regulatory and market pressures in a highly competitive environment.

Idiom was originally designed three years ago to fix a problem within NZI, always with a view that it was being developed as a standalone product.

It was dropped when Insurance Australia Group bought NZI.

Phil Bowden, who was NZI's application architect at the time, said the insurance company had looked at rules engines while it was redeveloping some of its core systems.

Overseas products such as Aeon and Selectica were judged too expensive and not a good match.

"The biggest problem is the alternatives didn't have a date-driven rule set - in insurance as with a lot of service organisations, things change but you need the old rules in place for what is in existence."

He said Idiom was a tenth of the price of competitors.

Idiom is keen to sell its technology to software developers, systems integrators and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), who can embed it in their architecture or applications. South Australia-based healthcare software developer Power Solutions has incorporated Idiom in its new module for working out how much hospitals should be reimbursed by government or private health funders.

Founder Paul Venables said the company's original web-based patient costing application, Power Cost Manager, has come to dominate the Australasian market since its launch in 2002.

It is used by the Auckland District Health Board, Capital Coast Health and Canterbury Health.

The Idiom partnership brought the time needed to develop the reimbursement module down from an expected 18 months to six months.

"Rules for calculating reimbursement are complex and constantly changing. Hospitals need to quickly reflect those changes in the applications so when they calculate their bills to the health fund they get it right," Venables said. "That's where Idiom comes in."