Jacada launches government push

Jacada Ltd. on Monday launched a public-sector business unit aimed at updating

government systems to provide better services to citizens.

Jacada specializes in modernizing legacy mainframe and AS/400 systems

with e-business and wireless applications.

The company already has several federal, state and local government

customers, including the departments of Treasury and Interior, the National

Institutes of Health and the state of Kentucky.

The McLean, Va.-based public-sector office will target agencies that

have done little with their legacy systems since they made them Year 2000-compliant,

said Aileen Bloom, Jacada director of federal business development.

"We're focusing on those agencies within the Department of Defense and

civilian agencies that have chosen best-of-breed legacy systems to be Y2K-enabled

but that now have mission-critical applications that need to be modernized,"

Bloom said.

The company's best-selling product is its Jacada for Java, which uses

existing applications and interfaces and nonintrusively produces a new Java

application, said David Holmes, senior vice president of marketing.

"Jacada for Java was first released in February of 1997 and accounts

for 85 percent of our revenues," Holmes said. "But the Jacada Innovator,

which will be ready [for government customers] in the first part of next

year, is the next step. It enables Cobol developers to build Internet or

wireless applications."

Jacada's other solutions include HTML integration; end-to-end e-commerce

solutions; Microsoft Corp. Windows integration; wireless applications for

the Palm VII; and full thin-client solutions.

Jacada's solutions are available on the General Services Administration

schedule through Severn Companies.

"There are a tremendous amount of legacy opportunities out there, and

without a deliberate federal market push, we got about six customers," Bloom

said. "The feedback so far has been tremendous."