Bowstreet
Application development tools for portals, prepackaged composite applications, and distributed web-based services.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| investor | €0.0 | round | |
N/A | Acquisition | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
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Bowstreet Inc. was a software company established in 1998 by co-founders Frank Moss and Jack Serfass. Moss, a seasoned technology entrepreneur with a Ph.D. from MIT, had previously co-founded and led several successful companies, including Tivoli Systems, which was acquired by IBM. Robert D. Crowley, an experienced software executive, was appointed CEO in September 1999.
The company specialized in developing tools for creating and deploying web-based portal applications. Its flagship product, the Portlet Factory, enabled businesses to integrate various corporate applications, documents, and databases into a single, unified portal. This addressed the need for companies to easily share data and connect with customers, partners, and suppliers. The software was designed to accelerate the development of portal applications, with claims of making the process two to twelve times faster when used with IBM's Rational development tools. The business model centered on licensing its high-end development tools to large enterprises.
Operating in the competitive enterprise software market, Bowstreet positioned itself as a key player in the portal-based tools space during the dot-com era. It established a significant partnership with IBM, collaborating for four years to support IBM's WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portals. Over its lifetime, the company secured approximately $145 million in funding from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Pequot Capital Management, and IDG Ventures. In December 2005, after surviving the dot-com crash and becoming a respected name in its niche, Bowstreet was acquired by IBM for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was part of IBM's broader strategy to bolster its service-oriented architecture (SOA) and composite application offerings, integrating Bowstreet's technology into its WebSphere and Rational software lines.
Keywords: portal development tools, portlet factory, web application development, enterprise portals, service-oriented architecture, SOA, composite applications, IBM WebSphere, application integration, data integration, B2B e-commerce, enterprise software, Java development tools, corporate applications, Frank Moss, Robert Crowley, Jack Serfass, IBM acquisition, legacy application integration, web services architecture
