“Our new platform goes beyond current enterprise Web 2.0 technologies to help optimize and streamline the actual business activities, increasing the speed and accuracy of decision-making by business professionals,” said JackBe CEO and co-founder Luis Derechin (pictured), as JackBe used the occasion of AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2006 to announce what it is positioning as "the industry’s most comprehensive solution for delivering enterprise AJAX applications based on SOA and Web services": its Presto REA platform.

“These ’long tail’ composite applications integrate other existing SOA services and processes to address high-value business needs that would not be funded or built based on traditional IT priorities,” Derechin added.

Applications built on the Presto platform, JackBe contends, gain business-class reliability, scalability, and service governance. "The results are highly interactive browser–based applications that help users to optimize both their regular and ad hoc activities," noted Derechin.

Complementing Presto’s governance features are components that provide reliable AJAX messaging, dynamic combination or ‘mashup’ of disparate SOA services, development and run-time frameworks, and a browser-based studio that empowers users to address their own application needs.

“There are scores of new products designed to accelerate Ajax development and client-side mashup of Web services,” said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. “What makes JackBe’s Presto platform unique is its central focus on SOA service governance. JackBe clearly understands that governance, scalability and reliability are critical factors for enterprises as they leverage SOA and Ajax to create the next generation of rich enterprise applications.”

“JackBe was delivering AJAX-based applications within major enterprises long before the term ‘AJAX’ had even been coined,” commented Dion Hinchcliffe, noted Web 2.0 visionary and CEO of consulting firm Hinchcliffe & Company. “Today’s announcement extends that vision by recognizing the tremendous business value that can be delivered with a multi-tier platform that directly extends SOA with AJAX. JackBe’s new Presto platform will make the development of AJAX-based Rich Enterprise Applications faster and easier, but its real game-changing potential is to empower business users to create their own situational or ‘tacit’ applications based on rapidly changing needs.”

Presto will be priced on a per-processor basis starting at $20,000 for a perpetual license; subscription pricing is also available. Beta shipments will begin in November, with a general-availability release planned for the first quarter of 2007.