What Does the Zumasys Purchase of jBASE Mean to You?
Nathan Rector spoke to Paul Giobbi, President of Zumasys, about jBASE. Here's what we learned.
IS: How does your purchase relate to the Temenos version of jBASE?
Paul: Zumasys purchased the version of jBASE targeted to the MultiValue marketplace. Temenos retained the banking version of the jBASE database, called Temenos Application Framework for C, also known as TAFC. With the Zumasys acquisition of jBASE, Temenos will retain ownership of TAFC, which they will continue to market to the banking industry.
IS: What are Zumasys' future plans for jBASE?
Paul: We firmly believe that jBASE is light years ahead of the competition. It has an extremely forward-thinking design, and we intend to leverage that to the market's benefit.
For example, we are looking to expand jBASE further into our cloud offering now that we have the flexibility that comes with owning the intellectual property. We are in the process of launching a multi-tenanted, public cloud offering called jBASE as a Service (jBaaS). Customers will be able to access the database from our enterprise-class cloud infrastructure for a set monthly fee. We can take advantage of economies of scale to offer very competitive prices.
We also are in the process of porting the MultiValue Dashboard to jBASE in addition to exploring ways to integrate our other software tools with the database. Our goal is to provide more value for the dollar with jBASE.
IS: Did Zumasys purchase the rights to continue development and enhancement of jBASE, or is Temenos still the primary developer?
Paul: Yes, Zumasys has purchased the rights to jBASE and we are the primary developer.
IS: How are you handling support?
Paul: The support team from jBASE joined the Zumasys team to form one expanded, global support network, reporting to Mike Coelho, General Manager, MultiValue Division. We are adding support for jBASE to our already broad support for D3 as well as OpenQM. In addition to expanding the depth of our support capabilities, we are also increasing our focus on providing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and industry-leading responsiveness.
IS: How will jBASE tie into Zumasys' Cloud solutions?
Paul: Instead of simply hosting jBASE in a VMware-based virtual machine as we've done for years, we are directly integrating the database into our cloud platform to enable our customers to move their applications to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model with hypervisor integration and eased provisioning. We are in the process of using the source code to do many other interesting things in the cloud, so stay tuned for more updates soon.
IS: What will the release schedule be like? What future enhancements are you looking to include?
Paul: Zumasys just issued jBASE, v5.2.30, the first release since the ownership change. We wanted to send a strong message to the market that we are serious about being more aggressive about releasing new versions of jBASE in the future. We are actively seeking customer feedback on functionality they would like to see added to jBASE. Customers can email us at listening@jbase.com .
IS: What is Zumasys' history with jBase, and how did that affect the purchase?
Paul: I've been friends with the co-founders of jBASE since they started the business, and in recent years, we've reconnected. When we decided to purchase a database in the MultiValue space, we went for the most architecturally elegant product available.
jBASE provides the functionality you would expect in a MultiValue database including language support (BASIC, Proc, Query), database support, and a MultiValue product spooler, editor, admin commands, etc. However, while you continue to develop in BASIC, your BASIC code, when compiled, is actually translated to C and then turned into native executables (.exe file extensions for Windows and binary files for Unix). In jBASE, there really isn't any shell required to interpret the BASIC as is the case with other MultiValue databases. You can write a BASIC program and compile it, and the resulting binary/exe ends up in the operating system path. It can be run directly from the operating system. That's exciting.
Another major differentiator with jBASE is the ability to connect with other databases such as SQL and Oracle. jBASE's file I/O runs through a layer called the jBASE External Database Interface or jEDI. jEDI allows you to write BASIC code using conventional OPEN/READ/WRITE commands that actually access and manipulate information stored in virtually any data store including relational databases, XML sources, etc. For companies looking to achieve improved integration with external systems, jBASE offers some very advanced and interesting options.
And because you can still program in BASIC (or C or whatever), you have a lot of flexibility in development and deployment.
IS: How does the purchase of jBase affect Zumasys' other customers who are using other MultiValue Databases?
Paul: Zumasys offers databases from Rocket including D3, UniVerse, and UniData. Some of the largest D3 sites rely on Zumasys for database and infrastructure support. We intend to honor our nearly 15-year partnership with TigerLogic/Rocket Software and we remain committed to the technology and our customers that utilize it. Our expertise in the MultiValue market, combined with our ability to provide total solutions, will allow us to truly provide our customers with what is best for them, based on their needs.
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