Conforama Selects Xcalia to Integrate Mission-Critical Systems Across
European Locations
Leading Furniture and Appliance Retailer Says Xcalia Intermediation
Core(TM) Increases System Interoperability and Decreases Development
Times
PARIS and PALO ALTO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- January 15, 2007 --
Xcalia, a leading provider of dynamic integration software, today
announced that France-based Conforama, the world's second largest
retailer of home furnishings and appliances, has deployed Xcalia
Intermediation Core(TM) to solve complex application integration
issues for its multinational operations.
With 2005 annual sales of EUR 3.14 billion through a network of 246
stores in Europe, Conforama continually faces IT system integration
challenges as it expands, due to a heterogeneous application
environment involving mission-critical systems that span multiple
geographies, most with different IT requirements and governmental
regulations.
One of Conforama's most recent IT initiatives was to improve customer
satisfaction and optimize the efficiency of customer service by
providing 180 European locations with real-time access to country
sales information and customer files. Conforama's IT group realized
that its current front-office applications could not scale to meet
these requirements and would have to be totally redesigned. The group
also decided to implement a J2EE application environment so that the
corporate applications could be ported to multiple databases, and
also give its development organization a more flexible integration
framework that would speed the deployment of future projects as well
as drive down the overall costs of the endeavors.
With the J2EE approach, Conforama wanted to reduce complexity in its
mission-critical applications, which included both custom and
packaged solutions. "At one point, we thought the only way to
decrease complexity and achieve our cost management goals was to
reduce the number of custom applications. But we realized that
packaged software would not meet our specific requirements for the
more business-critical, high performance, applications. We soon
discovered that building our own solutions using Xcalia helped to
reduce our development time," said Jean-Paul Rinaldi, IT Director of
Conforama. "Xcalia's innovative intermediation approach provides us
with a framework to mix and match custom and packaged applications
and gives our company more flexibility in the solutions we provide to
meet the needs of individual stores."
Conforama is also moving towards a service-oriented architecture by
increasing its use of web services, particularly in Internet
applications with suppliers. Mr. Rinaldi and his team want to be able
to access and map both data and service resources and easily reuse
them in a new application.
Xcalia Intermediation Core is a service-oriented software platform
which utilizes a new approach to creating and managing composite
applications and their modern and legacy data resources.
Intermediation is a patented infrastructure layer that sits between
the business model and the data/service resources that enables
composite applications to be assembled faster and easier to meet
changing business demands. This capability enables interoperability,
faster development and deployment of applications and services, and
reduced cost of SOA, legacy integration and migration projects.
"Today's multi-billion euro organizations such as Conforama require a
great deal of flexibility to support their unique business
processes," said Pierre Violo, CEO of Xcalia. "Xcalia Intermediation
Core makes it easy for large organizations to adapt their
heterogeneous IT environments to meet ever-changing customer demands
and manage external business relationships using best practices for
data management in service oriented architectures."
About Xcalia
Xcalia's dynamic integration software makes it easier for enterprises
to build composite applications in SOAs while reusing valuable
information resources, optimizing IT investments and reducing
operating costs. Through Intermediation, a layer between the business
model and the data/services resources, applications can be created or
updated quickly to meet changing business demands. Xcalia is ideal
for high-performance transactional applications that also need to
reuse legacy and mainframe resources with maximum interoperability in
any environment. The company has 20 large enterprise customers and
has partnerships with IBM, Microsoft and Sierra Atlantic.
Headquartered in Paris, France, Xcalia has offices in the U.S. and
Germany, and the company is privately held. For more information,
visit www.xcalia.com.
About Conforama
Conforama (a subsidiary of the PPR group) is the French leader and
the world's second largest retailer of home furnishings and
appliances, with a network of 246 stores, including 177 units in
France and 11 in French overseas departments and territories. With
approximately 14,000 employees, Conforama operates 58 stores -- 39
under the Conforama name and 19 Emmezeta-branded units -- in seven
countries: Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Poland, Luxembourg, Italy
and Croatia.
Xcalia, Xcalia Intermediation Core and the Xcalia logo are registered
trades of Xcalia.
Xcalia Media Inquiries:
Kurt Foeller
kurt@foellercom.com
Phone: +1 (415) 578-3251
SOURCE: Xcalia
