CSIRO aims at independent platform evaluation

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) is releasing a series of studies this month which evaluate a key technology for Internet-based computing.

The study of middleware technologies is aimed at providing independent assistance for business in product choice.

CSIRO has released the first two of a continuously updated set of reports including Iona Technology Inc.'s OrbixOTM and Forte Software Inc.'s 4GL.

BEA WebLogic Enterprise, Inprise's Visibroker ITS, Fujitsu's Interstage Application Server and Microsoft's COM+ will be available later this month.

Work is also under way to evaluate Enterprise Java Beans and message-orientated middleware products.

CSIRO's Ian Gorton said IT managers can rely on the evaluations provided in the reports.

"Our independence and the scientifically rigorous design of the evaluation process mean that IT managers can have faith that our results represent the most comprehensive and reliable evaluation of competing technologies," he said.

"We are pleased with the feedback we have received from vendors and users of middleware. As organizations rely on Internet-based applications to perform more of their basic business functions the consequences of unreliability or inappropriate configurations becomes more serious."