New IBM WebSphere Business Integration Software Lets Companies Cut Costs, Accelerate E-business

Business Wire, May 8, 2002

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2002

New IBM Technologies Exploit Web Services to

Address Today's Top I.T. Challenge

IBM(a) today announced new WebSphere infrastructure software to solve today's top I.T. priority: reducing the cost and difficulty of integrating disparate business applications and systems.

The products -- including new WebSphere(a) Application Server, MQ, Business Integration, Portal and "enterprise modernization" software -- cement IBM's leadership in addressing the multi-dimensional challenges of business integration.

As companies use the Internet to open their enterprises to customers, partners and suppliers for greater efficiency and productivity -- such as linking a purchasing department to outside vendors or adjusting inventory levels to match the latest customer buying patterns -- they encounter layers of different I.T. systems that have been purchased over time, many of which are unable to interoperate.

The result is that disparate applications and business systems often remain sequestered within departments, weakening a company's e-business readiness. Or, companies try to tackle the problem with a maze of piecemeal, proprietary or custom-rigged integration solutions that are expensive and time-consuming to implement and maintain. Companies spend as much as 40 percent of their annual I.T. budgets on integration, analysts say. A recent Gartner report described "a complex, disorganized, unmanaged, inefficient -- and expensive -- inter-application 'spaghetti-like' architecture that connects applications and databases throughout the enterprise and, increasingly, its business partners, suppliers and customers."(b)

The new WebSphere products announced today at IBM's developerWorks Live! conference are designed to help companies reap considerable cost savings and improve efficiency, customer service and time to market through faster, more effective and easier-to-manage integration.

Built on industry standards such as Web services, Java and XML, and expertise gained from tens of thousands of WebSphere customer engagements, the new offerings address all types of integration needs, from the "get-started-quickly" requirements of newer e-businesses to sophisticated, cross-enterprise scenarios.

WebSphere simplifies integration through the industry's most comprehensive e-business platform, with common infrastructure underpinnings and development tools across the portfolio. So, for example, companies can use WebSphere to plug an internal portal into a Customer Relationship Management application and link to an ERP system.

The new offerings make it faster, easier and cheaper for companies to deploy Web services -- a more automated way to link companies, customers, suppliers and employees over the Internet -- and to integrate packaged applications and existing mainframe systems without the cost and lost flexibility of rewriting applications to fit a particular programming model or operating system.

"At Whirlpool, we see the opportunity to gain important operating efficiencies and increase speed to market through a fully integrated business model," said Jim Haney, Vice President, Architecture and Planning, Whirlpool Corporation. "From WebSphere Portal at the front end, through CrossWorlds and WebSphere MQ, to our DB2 databases running on our IBM enterprise server, we have achieved an unparalleled degree of integration. Our portal implementations have dramatically increased internal communications; while our integrated WebSphere implementation has reduced order processing costs more than 80 percent."

"Integration is an enormous pain point for customers and represents a major opportunity for IBM and our partners," said John A. Swainson, General Manager, Application and Integration Middleware, IBM. "We are committed to working with customers to reduce the high costs of integration, and increase speed to market and new business opportunities."

Products introduced today include:

WebSphere Application Server Version 5, the latest version of the market-leading Web application server, offers more advanced capabilities for Web services while also providing the secure, scalable and transaction-intensive infrastructure to take advantage of the new interoperability features that are part of J2EE 1.3, the latest standard for server-based Java business applications.

While WebSphere Application Server Version 4 and WebSphere Studio tools last year became the first infrastructure software to deliver built-in support for Web services standards -- something IBM's competitors are now only beginning to do -- Version 5 will be the first to provide a full Web services infrastructure ready for broad enterprise support. This offers companies all they need to deploy Web services internally and then extend them externally -- to customers or trading partners -- in a secure and manageable environment.

Other new features for Web services include easier, more visual ways for developers to compose Web services, new security features, and the ability to build new applications that integrate with multiple back-end systems through the Java-based J2EE Connector Architecture.