Yasu weighs options on BRE market

Srinivasa Rao Dasari / Hyderabad

Satish Madhira

Hyderabad Software Exporters’ Association (Hysea) has declared that the product QuickRules, developed by the Hyderabad-based Yasu Technologies, is the best for the year 2003. QuickRules is a new agile interface application that caters to the needs of the business rules engine (BRE) market. At present, the product is available in two versions—QuickRules.Net 1.5 and QuickRules 2.6 for J2EE versions. This BRE product is a rules engine that reduces maintenance and enhancement costs by separating business rules from application code. The BRE utility is likely to become much more popular in the next few years and the practice of separating and codifying business rules during the initial stages of systems development would become common practice. The product addresses functional and technical challenges of designing, developing, deploying and managing business rules using enterprise resource planning (ERP) products across the network of a business organisation. This product can be integrated with any type of ERP and customised according to the specific needs of an enterprise. It supports almost all J2EE-compliant application servers and uses an open XML format for rule definition. The interface application is very user-friendly—heads of various departments, general managers, CEOs and others can customise the interface as per their needs using simple English-like rule language without any technical expertise in programming. So far, it has sold about 50 units. While 40 customers are using the J2EE version, nearly 10 have opted for the .NET version.

“. NET is also picking up and the cost is very low in this when compared with Java applications. QuickRules is widely used in different verticals such as travel, banking, insurance, telecom and healthcare, etc. According to feedback from customers, the RoI on using our product is in the range of 15-30 percent. Our current headcount is at 55 and will be 70 by the end of this year and 200 by 2005. We are trying to get our product patented and hopefully the process will be completed this year,” Satish Madhira, CEO, Yasu Technologies, told Express Computer.

The size of the global BRE market is estimated at around $300 million and will continue to grow due to ever-changing business requirements and competition. BRE technology is being included in the area of flow control represented by Business Process Management (BPM) technology that is penetrating different sectors. There is also an emerging concept of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and its associated Web services, which also need to include rules sensitivity. Business rules were previously associated with niche technologies such as rules-based expert systems and workflow software.

Now the concept of a separate rules engine is on the verge of broader acceptance because of the reach across the global network through the Internet and the compelling need to integrate disparate applications. On the Web, companies would prefer to cater to customers’ individual preferences with one-to-one marketing and fulfilment.

Going by the encouraging response from customers, the company is confident that its product will generate good revenues. At present, eight insurance companies are using the QuickRules product for claims management and premium calculations.

“Yasu Technologies is the only Indian company that is involved in the BRE segment with both versions on .NET and J2EE. The company is likely to release the new versions of Quickrules J2EE 3.0 and .NET 2.0 in the next month,” Prasanna Boni, vice president (Operations) of Yasu Technologies said.

According to sources in the product development segment, as the demand for business rules engines is steadily increasing, so have the number of viable options for corporate IT initiatives.