Big Blue Gets Personal with New Software

While the tempestuous climate of e-commerce sees firms breaking apart more
often then building out, Big Blue is experiencing the latter as Thursday IBM Corp. rolled out new software to deliver a
personalized experience to Internet, intranet and extranet users.

Part of the giant’s WebSphere e-commerce
platform, initially launched in March, WebSphere Personalization aims
to help companies at each stage of e-business development, from startup to
handling high-volume Web transactions typical of B2B marketplaces — the
popularity of which is soaring.

The new addition allows companies to deliver Web content that is
personalized to match the unique needs and interests of individual site
visitors. The firm believes developers will buddy up to the technology
because it decreases the amount of application code they need to create to
deliver targeted content.

will have 24 percent market
share — up 50 percent over 1999.

Paraic Sweeney, vice president of marketing, IBM WebSphere software
platform, said businesses are always looking for ways to get cozier with
their clients.

WebSphere Personalization features:

• Rules-based filtering capabilities via IBM rules engine technology
• Collaborative filtering capabilities via Macromedia LikeMinds
  technology
• Support for integration with multiple sources of profiles and content
• Support for deployment on a wide range of operating systems
• Integration with a Web page design and business rules entry tool,
  WebSphere Studio, Advanced Edition
• Integration with a scaleable deployment environment,
  WebSphereApplication Server, Advanced or Enterprise Edition

WebSphere Personalization is available worldwide immediately for the AIX,
HP-UX, Solaris, Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems. WebSphere
Personalization, Version 3.5, will be available on October 31 for the OS/400
operating system. The price is $10,000 per processor.