Two New York-based content providers ScreamingMedia Inc. and Factiva have hopped on board IBM’s newly-launched WebSphere portal server development software.
The two firms, which deliver Web-based content online and off, are among the first clients of Big Blue’s platform that helps build centralized browser and wireless access to corporate data and applications.
ScreamingMedia and Factiva said they would join IBM’s partner program to offer WebSphere users access to more than 30,000 content sources ranging from stocks, industry news, world news, weather and sports.
ScreamingMedia, a content aggregation and syndication company, said it would latch its flagship SiteWare software onto WebSphere to provide IBM customers with direct wireless and Webtop access to fresh and relevant content.
Once its trial phase with the platform is completed, ScreamingMedia said the idea is to combine its aggregation platform with IBM’s software in order to give ScreamingMedia customers the ability to publish and integrate their own internal content or third-party content. For example, once the content that ScreamingMedia aggregates has been gathered from its far-flung locales and filtered through ScreamingMedia’s platform, it would be fed into portlets, portal applications ready to serve up content to a variety of devices from the wired and wireless variety.
The announcements help illustrate the positioning — even elbow sharpening — underway with technology outfits as they build out their infrastructure for mobile content offerings. Just this week, Lucent Technologies announced that it would be integrating ScreamingMedia’s content integration platform into one of its own mobile media platforms that it builds for mobile operators. The third-party products would enable Lucent’s mobile providers to offer media services such as audio content and streaming capabilities on the current wireless networks available to them as well as high-bandwidth 3G networks that are ramping up.
Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters company, also plans to plug its content integration tools onto WebSphere to offer access to information databases. Factiva includes the Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones, Reuters and Associated Press newswires.
Other partners include Texas-based business research firm Hoovers and iSyndicate, a content aggregation play.
