Open Hypermedia Systems Working Group

CORBA

This page contains pointers to CORBA vendors, and provides a brief summary of their products and prices. This is list is not meant to be complete. If you know of additional CORBA vendors, not listed here, please send me the information.

CORBA Vendors

IONA Technologies - IONA produces the Orbix set of technologies which includes the standard Orbix product which is a fully CORBA-compliant ORB with language bindings for C++, Java and SmallTalk, a new product called OrbixWeb which provides CORBA to Java Applets, and supplemental items such as a CORBA Transaction Manager. Orbix costs 5000 dollars on Unix systems PER developer. The multi-threaded version costs 6500 dollars a seat! Other platforms typically cost 2500 dollars for a developer's licence. In addition, run-time licenses cost around 100 - 200 dollars for each machine which will be making use of the developed CORBA technologies. A development kit for OrbixWeb is $799, with support for the product sold separately at $400. OrbixWeb does not require a separate run-time license. IONA offers a chance to evaluate OrbixWeb for free for a limited time.

Object Oriented Concepts, Inc. - OOC provides a free (for non-commercial use) CORBA 2.0-compliant ORB called OmniBroker. OmniBroker supports both C++ and Java and comes with a variety of third-party extensions. The price for a developers license for commercial use of OmniBroker is 2500 dollars and 1250 dollars for each additional license. Six months of support is included with this price. An additional year of support can be purchased for 1000 dollars for one license and 500 dollars for each additional license. OOC, Inc. does not charge a run-time royalty since non-commercial use is free!

Sun Microsystems - Sun markets a product called NEO which is an environment that enables the creation of distributed software products around CORBA. JOE is a Java-based ORB which provides Java applets with access to systems constructed using NEO. JOE is currently bundled with NEO. Solaris NEO 2.0 costs 195 dollars however this package is apparently the equivalent of a client-side run-time license. The developer tools are provided in a separate product called the Internet Workshop which sells for 6295 dollars! The latter puts Sun's offering at a comparable price-point with the other CORBA vendors.

UPDATE: On November 17, 1997, it was announced that Sun is discontinuing its NEO project. Instead, it plans to migrate some of the NEO ORB's functionality into the Solaris operating system and then establish partnerships with other CORBA vendors.

Visigenic Software - Soon to be acquired by Borland, Visigenic produces the VisiBroker set of CORBA technologies. VisiBroker has language bindings to C++ and Java and makes available evaluation copies of the software available for thirty days. I have not been able to find pricing information on Visigenic's site, but I remember being offered a special price of close to 5000 dollars a seat for a developer's licence after my evaluation copy of VisiBroker for Java expired. An interesting partnership with Netscape has resulted in the Visigenic ORB being embedded in the most recent version of Netscape Navigator. The implication is that after you pay the development fee to acquire VisiBroker, you have access to a wide variety of CORBA users who are unaware they even have an ORB on their desktop! Note: Access to this ORB is only available to clients (e.g. Java applets) that execute within the browser.

Feedback? Send it to Ken Anderson.
Last Modified: 12/11/97; 1:49:20 PM PST