NEW YORK — IBM
The company is billing the software as an “out-of-the-box” integration solution which will make it easier to track orders, manage
Louis J. D’Ambrosio, vice president, Worldwide Sales & Marketing, IBM Software Group, noted that Oracle’s strategy is to get
“We say, go out and pick the best applications in the world,” he said. “Buy the best server in the world,” and the middleware will
Big Blue is betting on strong growth in the integration server software platform market, based on reports by firms like IDC, which has helped lead the charge to define Web services standards as part of an effort to secure a place as a leader
in the integration space. On Monday, Big Blue reiterated its strategy and launched the newest addition to its middleware integration
suite, CrossWorlds Extender for WebSphere Commerce.
CrossWorlds Extender, built on J2EE, XML and other Web services standards, is aimed at serving one of the highest levels of
integration — business process integration. In the commerce space, business process integration (at its simplest) means pulling
together order placement, order planning and order shipping in an integrated, streamlined solution.
inventory and ship goods by tying together business processes to help organizations streamline their operations.
The infrastructure is built around WebSphere Application Server and DB2 Universal Database, and IBM said it features an open
architecture based on a Java programming model, intended to make it simple for developers to add or customize features to their
needs.
But while CrossWorlds Extender, which IBM plans to generally release in the third quarter starting at $150,000, addresses commerce
from a business process integration standpoint (and Big Blue is codifying business process integration for other areas like
financial services and telcos) IBM’s strategy is to encompass all levels of integration, including user roles (like individualized
employee, customer and partner portals), applications (the exposure and use of services between applications in order to connect
applications together to benefit from automated updates and straight through processing of transactions), information (message-based
integration which allows applications to asynchronously exchange event messages), directory/security, storage and operating
environments.
customers to buy all their software from it in order to achieve an integrated solution, while Sun Microsystems offers integration to
customers willing to use the Solaris operating environment for all their needs.
provide the necessary integration.
has predicted the market will more than double to $4.3 billion by 2006. Further, a recent Gartner study found that 40 percent of
customer IT budgets are spent on integration. Meanwhile, IBM’s in-house data shows that 80 percent of customers around the world are
in the early stages of e-business, less than 15 percent are fundamentally integrating their business processes, and about 5 percent
are at an advanced stage where they are using technologies like Web services. Meanwhile, a May 2001 CIO survey by Morgan Stanley
found that integration topped the list of customer strategic software projects for 2002.
Big Blue Unveils Commerce Integration Platform
