Local enterprise applications and services vendor Rubico has gone public with its latest successes after six years of covert marketing. In that time, it has managed to win clients such as ABSA, Sanlam, Grinaker, Iscor, South Deep (Western Areas), the ANC and others. It is also planning expansion into the US market through an unnamed partner, and possibly an offshore listing.
The company`s product offering - also named Rubico - competes with enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors such as SAP and JD Edwards, yet, according to Jay van Zyl, Rubico technology and research director, it is not an ERP solution. It also meets enterprise application vendors like Oracle in its space.
The company has confirmed that it has been talking to the Reserve Bank regarding its offshore listing, but is keeping the details of both this and its prospective US partner under its hat.
Arising as it did from the Group 5 stables, it has a reputation as a construction vertical market segment player, an image that the company dismisses. Rubico is currently concentrating on the financial services field. "We can be all things to all people, but we don`t want to do that," says Willie Esterhuyzen, Rubico MD.
Using component-based technology, the company offers a mix of off-the-shelf and build-to-order solutions, and says its product gives the customer the benefit of pre-packaged and home-grown software.
"Our customers seek a strategic advantage," notes Esterhuyzen. "We offer them a buy and assemble solution." He refers to the modular software design as a "Lego set" environment. "Each Lego block is a robust application in itself, and you build your solution as you like it."
Esterhuyzen notes another boon of the software is its ability to implement business change without programming, as well as "change at the speed of business". He admits that the solution does sound similar to JD Edwards` Idea to Action strategy, but claims that Rubico`s product has more deliverables.
The company`s home-grown Rubico object broker (ROB) middleware is compatible with Unix`s Corba, Microsoft`s COM, Sun`s Enterprise Java Beans, and other standard object frameworks - essentially a middleware for middleware. It also provides the framework for the 1 000-plus objects that Rubico offers, and acts as the interface between the client and server.
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