Axway, the software subsidiary of Paris-based services vendor Sopra, says that it will take up to a year to fully integrate technology acquired with its purchase of Viewlocity’s enterprise application integration (EAI) assets with its own EAI technology.

UK general manager Martin Stern has admitted that although the acquisition was agreed in March 2002, the company still has much work to do to integrate it with Axway Integration Broker (XIB), Axway’s core EAI product that boasts around 5,000 contracts across Europe.

However, he added that the main focus of the purchase for Axway was not Viewlocity’s EAI and XML technology, but its business process management layer and global customer base, particularly in the US and Asia/Pacific.

Viewlocity customers worldwide will continue to be supported, says Stern. Indeed, it may mean a better level of support for them because of the neglect the technology suffered as Viewlocity sought to re-focus from EAI to supply chain event management.

Axway has also pledged to spend 22% of revenues – some €13 million – on research and development during 2002 to improve its product and positioning in the fast-consolidating EAI market.

Axway grew out of Sopra’s development of integration software for the French banking system in the late 1980s, with a product called RDJ or Règles du Jeu – ‘rules of the game’ in French. Axway was set up as a separate subsidiary for Sopra’s integration software in 2001.

The idea was to enable the software side of the services group to develop independently and to reduce the level of conflict between the differing interests of the two elements. Sopra intends to retain control of the company, said Stern.