Crossroads on European track

Silicon Valley startup Crossroads Software has begun signing Vars to establish itself in Europe, having gained interest and money from industry figures, companies and venture capitalists.

The company has attracted investment from Ernst & Young, Intel and SAP as well as high-profile individuals including Andy Ludwick, former chief executive at Bay Networks, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell and John Chen, CEO of Pyramid.

Founded in April 1996, Crossroads develops software that allows unrelated enterprise applications to work together, even if from different vendors.

The overall aim is to eliminate customised package integration.

The company, which has only three staff employed in Europe, has begun to offer a solution provider programme for several resellers including UK-based SAP, Axon Solutions and Ernst & Young Technologies. Katrina Garrett, founder, president and CEO of Crossroads, said the company can now exploit markets wherever enterprise application integration is needed.

Crossroads has nine Vars and aims to recruit five more by the end of the year. It claims to offer Vars the ability to give a faster return on investment to customers through quick integration of their applications.

As an indication, the company gave the example of one corporate which gave its clients the option of paying for services as they use them.

Through the Crossroads software, a service call made at the firm's customer service system automatically prompted its accounts system to produce an invoice. This was achieved despite the fact that the two systems use different applications that were never designed to work together.