News

Free open-source app integrator saves coding time

• By Shawna McAlearney
• May 23, 2006

Open-source application integration software is getting accolades from end users who previously spent “weeks and weeks of man hours coding integration tools and utilities to process data.”

Apparel manufacturer The Marena Group had relied on in house programming talents to exchange orders and product information data with business partners. Jitterbit changed all that.

“Ease of use is a big reason we picked Jitterbit over others. We wanted a powerful tool that was designed so that it could be used by companies like ours–ones who don’t have dozens of programmers on staff,” says Alex Knezevic, The Marena Group’s IT director. “We’re not software developers. We downloaded a demo from Jitterbit’s Web site and were transforming in hours–not weeks or months.”

“The tool is very user friendly. The process is mostly drag and drop,” he adds.

Jitterbit yesterday announced the general availability of Jitterbit Community Edition and Jitterbit Professional Edition, which are designed to reduce the cost and complexity of integrating key application data across a variety of common industry protocols and data types.

According to Jitterbit President Sharam Sasson, all Jitterbit code is free for the use of the community and can be modified, packaged or sold as anyone sees fit. The difference between the free “Community” and “Professional” versions is solely based on support and other services available from Jitterbit.

Jitterbit Community Edition 1.0 is available for free and can be downloaded. Jitterbit Professional Edition 1.0 is available starting at $9995 per server per year and includes full product support. Users can participate in the Jitterbit Community and provide feedback.

“I was personally really impressed with the support received from the Jitterbit team in the presales stage,” says Knezevic. “Even before we thought about a commercial relationship with those guys, they were super attentive and supported the ‘Community’ version of their product better than a lot of companies support commercially licensed software.”

Marena Group’s future plans for Jitterbit include integrating the account/contacts in the ERP suite with e-mail and the CRM system in real time using SOAP calls, tying in the computer-based phone system, and data replication from a marketing program database to the corporate Web portal.