IBM Delivers Industry's Broadest Data and Application Integration in New Database Software

Business Wire, May 8, 2001

Business Editors

SOMERS, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2001

Enables Businesses to Increase Efficiency/Reduce Costs in Integrating

Business Operations

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new DB2 database software enabling customers to integrate data from the widest variety of sources in the industry, including Web application integration, access to critical data sources and legacy applications.

No other database vendor in the industry provides this breadth of data management capabilities today.

The increased focus on data and product integration eases the day-to-day challenges that businesses are facing today. Businesses face the challenge of managing information located in various data sources, using multiple software vendors' products and developing new applications to meet their evolving business needs. The database, such as DB2, plays an important role in this e-business evolution as the foundation for integrating a company's most critical information.

Today's announcement of DB2 version 7.2 introduces:

- Enhanced integration capabilities with WebSphere Application Server and
MQSeries, two industry-leading e-infrastructure components.

- Support for emerging Web Services standards, SOAP and UDDI, continuing the
momentum of IBM's leadership in supporting the standards movement.

- The only database to offer high-performance access to expanded data sources,
in all formats and locations, including competing database products such as
Oracle, Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server.

e-business Integration

Software integration enables customers to streamline their business processes, enhance their existing infrastructure and minimize the skills required to support their IT environment. With today's announcement, IBM's DB2 database is delivering enhanced integration capabilities with the industries fastest growing web application server, WebSphere. The combination of DB2 and WebSphere Application Server allows for easier Web deployment and faster application development.

The integration with WebSphere Application Server enables DB2 to also manage new Web services requests in the form of industry standards, SOAP and UDDI. The database, such as DB2, plays an important role in a Web Services environment as the information repository. For example, IBM's UDDI directory is built upon the combination of DB2 and WebSphere Application Server. The Web site located at http://www-3.ibm.com/services/uddi provides a place for e-businesses to publish and subscribe to Web based services. The combination of DB2 and WebSphere also delivers Web services using the SOAP standard.

IBM is also announcing today tighter integration of DB2 with the industry leading messaging queuing software, MQSeries. Now developers can treat messages queues as if they are tables in the database. This opens up a new world of data sources for data warehousing and applications including e-commerce.

IBM invests in joint engineering practices with WebSphere Application Server and MQSeries at the DB2 Solutions Center in Toronto. Rigorous testing of these combined technologies enables powerful interaction, customer support and performance capabilities that is unsurpassed by the competition. No other software vendor provides this powerful combination of infrastructure software critical to a companies e-infrastructure.

Information Integration

Customers need to integrate their internal business data with external data sources for applications such as business-to-business. Using MQSeries and WebSphere Application Server coupled with XML standards, DB2 provides customers the fastest path to integrating their business to the extended e-infrastructure.

IBM's information integration efforts makes it easy and faster to fuel the e-business infrastructure with heterogeneous information. Now customers can get to a wider array of information sources. In addition to being integrated with MQSeries and WebSphere, the latest version of DB2 also offers customers access to information stored in Informix, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases.

While competitors claim to offer the highest form of integration through various add-ons, DB2 allows users access to expanded data sources straight from the database, providing for optimized access to all information. DB2 also incorporates built in business intelligence connectors to enable seamless integration with developer solutions such as SAP and i2 Technologies, making the development of data warehouses easier and faster to deploy. No other database vendor produces this functionality today. DB2 also can integrate information from Life Sciences applications, to facilitate the sharing of different forms of data in the biotechnology industry.

Technology Leadership

DB2 is the worlds most renowned database surpassing the competition for its scalability, reliability and total cost of ownership (TCO). DB2 recently posted several record-breaking performance benchmarks demonstrating its leadership for Web transactions, business intelligence and application workloads running on leading application developer platforms including SAP, Peoplesoft and i2 Technologies.