Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Phurnace Software – Made Java Applications Easier to Manage

Most people in town know Phurnace Software because they’ve made quite a splash in the past year. For those who don’t know, Phurnace makes software that accelerates the deployment of Java applications. Founded by Daniel Nelson while at UT, Phurnace now resides in the Austin Technology Incubator.

Larry Warnock recently took over as CEO of the startup. Larry has quite a history with startups. He developed a startup in the Bay area which was acquired by Siebel. He came to Austin to join AV Labs and then moved on to Zilliant and Vignette before landing at Phurnace.

I met with Larry recently and learned more about Phurnace’ offering. Java applications require a great deal of customization on the enterprise software environment. There are literally hundreds of parameters that must be set and adjusted for the web services layer in the network – of which there are three main standards. Phurnace builds scripts into its Java application development environment and manages these parameters for the user.

Although Larry wouldn’t divulge revenue or sales stats, he did say they are seeing traction in the marketplace. Phurnace is a great example of startups coming out of UT. In the case of Phurnace they won the UT Moot Corp competition last year.

Best regards,
Hall T.

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