Lion Nathan snaps up DTM system from Genie

By ADAM GIFFORD

Auckland-based Genie Systems has created a separate product from the middleware it developed for its OrderWare electronic procurement software.

The first non-OrderWare customer for the Data Transformation Manager (DTM) is brewer Lion Nathan, which will use it to put customer orders into its core system.

Genie's Australasian general manager Nigel Varcoe said DTM allowed organisations to integrate all internal and external relationships, whatever system their customers or suppliers were using.

Lion Nathan IT director Darryl Warren said Lion wanted to be able to take electronic data in a wide variety of formats from customers and put it into its MFG Pro ERP (enterprise resource planning) system.

"We already had a core transaction system which worked well, so we didn't want to buy an e-procurement system. We just wanted to e-enable the existing system, but we didn't want to develop the interfaces."

He would not reveal the project cost, which included modifications by Genie Systems to fit Lion's requirements.

A basic DTM server licence costs $40,000, which covers transformations between XML, SQL and flat files. Users will be charged extra for other formats.

Chief technology officer Peter Garden said DTM will compete with high end middleware solutions such as Web Methods.

DTM has been used for the past year in OrderWare sites like Babies 'r' Us in the US and Keppel FELS in Singapore. Customers have started buying separate licences for non-OrderWare uses.

Mr Garden said DTM gave OrderWare an edge on competitors such as Ariba, which often required data to be input in particular flavours of XML.