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New programming technologies entice and challenge CIOs.

By John Edwards

October 01, 2000 — CIO — Desperate times call for desperate measures, and e-commercestartup E-botz.com was determined to create a working website assoon as possible.

"The dotcom market was slipping," recalls Steve Stinton,E-botz.com’s CTO. "The investors wanted to see something now,and we had nothing to give them." The business plan Stinton haddeveloped with CEO Lonnie Wills and COO Tim Shanahan called forE-botz.com to provide a health-care supplies comparison-shoppingservice. The Vancouver, Wash.-based venture aims to helpclinics, doctors’ offices and similar facilities find the bestdeals on rubber gloves, needles and other widely used medicalproducts. Great idea. But like zillions of other dotcomstartups, Stinton and his partners had put the cart in front ofthe horse, polishing their business plan before creating afunctional technology. Now, facing increasingly skepticalinvestors, they had to build the service’s basicarchitec-ture--fast.

After considering and rejecting several e-commerce-orienteddevelopment tools, the team settled on NQL Solutions’ NetworkQuery Language, a scripting language designed to simplify thecreation of intelligent agents, bots and Web applications. "NQLis a solid company, and its technology is easy to use andsuperior to the competition, particularly its pattern matchingand recognition tools," says Stinton. But the language was alsovery new--still at the beta-test stage--which meant thatE-botz.com found itself risking its future on a product that hadno commercial track record. Yet Stinton felt it was moreimportant to use a technology that provided the capabilitiesE-botz.com required rather than settle for a less capable buttried-and-tested tool. "Sometimes you have to cross your fingersand hope for the best," he says.

Rolled Over By Rollouts

As new programming languages and development tools roll acrossthe IT landscape, more than a few CIOs are tossing dice andpraying to whatever idols are conveniently available. These CIOsare finding themselves in a pinch, says Larry Perlstein,research director of Gartner Group, a technology researchcompany based in Stamford, Conn. "In order to stay competitivethey’re forced to use tools that they and their programmersdon’t yet fully trust or understand."

CIOs tend to have a love-hate relationship with emergingprogramming technologies, says Vito Legrottaglie, former vicepresident of IT systems and operations for Programmer’sParadise, a Shrewsbury, N.J.-based software reseller thatspecializes in languages and programming tools. "On the onehand, new languages and tools enable programmers to developapplications faster than before. On the other hand, they alsorequire significant investments in research, training and otherresources."

Life as a Guinea Pig

For E-botz.com, the gamble with NQL is paying off. After somefour months of planning the service’s design and scope, E-botzused the product to develop a working model of a product-pricingservice in a mere two-and-a-half weeks. Then E-botz was able topresent that model to both current and potential investors. "NQLhelped by providing the technology and by reducing our learningcurve to the point where we can bring a developer on board andhave that person writing pretty decent stuff in a couple ofhours," says Stinton. After some more refining and a period ofbeta testing with clinics, the E-botz.com service is scheduledto begin operation by January 2001.

 

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