Glue42 Open-Sources Web App Interoperability

Desktop software integration provider Glue42 is open-sourcing its web application interoperability platform, Glue42 Core, which uses progressive web applications (PWAs) to deliver a native app-like experience to users without a local installation at no extra cost.

James Wooster, chief operating officer at Glue42, tells WatersTechnology that the critical item in this release is the use of PWAs. This means there is no need to deploy containers—software that allows web applications to communicate with each other through the integration platform.

At an enterprise level, deploying a container on employees’ desktops is standard procedure—Excel or Outlook, for example, are deployed in this way. The problem arises when that web application is offered outside the enterprise.

Let’s say a tier-1 bank is using an integration platform, and it wants to offer its web application-as-a-service to third-party partners. The container that was deployed within the enterprise would also have to be deployed on the third-party’s machines. 

“For the first time, that little container, which was previously only within the tier-1 bank, now needs to be deployed at their partner’s machines and their partner’s partners’ machines, and so on. You get this mushroom effect of everyone outside the tier-1 bank that wants to use those applications having to deploy that container,” Wooster says.

“That’s a serious problem, because while you can control, govern, and upgrade software reasonably easily within your own enterprise, when you start asking your business partners to deploy software, that becomes much more complex and there are significant security issues as a result,” he says. 

• To read more about desktop application interoperability projects in the capital markets, click here.

Glue42 has a modular enterprise platform called Enterprise, which integrates complex environments with a mix of different kinds of applications. The company has taken the features of Enterprise aimed at web-to-web applications, and packaged them as the Core solution.

“All those organizations, large or small, that have predominantly web applications and want them to talk to each other exchange data, and manage screen real estate, now don’t need to buy a product. Not only is it open-sourced, it’s also under an MIT license, which means a global enterprise like a tier-1 bank can download this from the internet and deploy it in their production environments,” Wooster says. 

At the moment, if an enterprise wants to purchase an interoperability platform, it would typically buy per-seat licenses. With Glue42 Core, they no longer have to. 

“Therefore you can very easily scale up the Core platform knowing there is no license fee today, and there will never be going forward. The result is that they spend less money and achieve the same outcome, which is an integrated desktop,” Wooster says. 

While Glue42 Core is free and available as open source, Glue42 will charge a fee for support services and maintenance. Also, in the case where firms want to integrate web-to-non-web or legacy applications, they will need to purchase Glue42 Enterprise. 

Wooster says that over time, the company wants to expand its web-to-web range using Glue42 Core. It will add new features to the product, and give it some of the other capabilities available on the Enterprise platform.