In a bid to put distance between itself and middleware competitors such as Oracle, SAP, and BEA Systems, IBM yesterday unveiled upgrades to several products in its WebSphere software line. The upgrades, the company said, will provide manufacturing companies with a quicker, more productive path to a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
The upgrades include tools that will make it easier for companies to create composite applications and highly interactive Web-based user interfaces; products for monitoring and managing Web services; and new security features built into an upgraded release of IBM's WebSphere Application Server product. IBM also rolled out a new series of service offerings, to be delivered by the company's Global Services unit, which will help manufacturers and others plan and implement a transition to SOA technologies.
The SOA announcements, said Steve Mills, IBM's senior vice president and Software Group executive, are intended to establish IBM's leadership among SOA middleware providers, and reflect the company's belief that, to compete, companies will need to improve their ability to rapidly transform business processes. Manufacturers and other companies need to achieve "faster order-to-cash and improved back office operations and supply networks," Mills said. "And integration needs to occur in a much smoother, better-connected way."
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During an online press conference, Mills said IBM is investing $1 billion per year to develop SOA products, train SOA experts, and create SOA support services. The company, for example, is currently training 90,000 consultants in SOA technologies and methodologies and building an SOA Center of Excellence.
Some customers say they've already begun to realize benefits from migrating to IBM's SOA-based WebSphere middleware products. Motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson, for example, is accelerating its ability to roll out new promotions and customer services by using WebSphere middleware to create more adaptable integrations between existing legacy applications.
Historically, said Harley CIO Jim Haney during the press conference, the company had little choice but to integrate applications such as its dealer and credit approval systems in a tight and inflexible way. As a result, Haney said, whenever Harley wanted to roll out a new marketing program that involved code alterations in one application, the changes rippled throughout Harley's systems environment, causing complexity and delays. SOA middleware, he said, will let Harley-Davidson create flexible, standard, loosely coupled linkages among existing systems, allowing individual applications to be changed without affecting others.
"In the past, when we made one change to one of those systems, we basically had to touch all of the systems," Haney said. "Our answer has been to decouple all of those systems, and make each one a service. That way we can change components quickly without having to touch every system in the process."
Haney said Harley-Davidson has worked with IBM Global Services to assemble an implementation plan and train developers. The manufacturer is now doing detailed testing with IBM's WebSphere products.
IBM's announcement included four major enhancements to the WebSphere product line.The company said a new release of its WebSphere Portal product, version 6.0, now includes new tools that allow users to more easily deploy composite applications and build business processes and user interfaces that can be tailored for specific industries or worker roles.
The tools support AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), a Web programming technique for creating interactive user interfaces. The tools also include a workflow builder that uses technology from IBM's WebSphere Process Server. The upgrade incorporates technologies acquired by IBM in the December 2005, purchase of Bowstreet Inc., a provider of portal-based tools and technology.
IBM also announced an upgrade of its WebSphere Business Monitor, version 6.0, that displays a high-level view of how well WebSphere-managed business processes are running, and includes business alerts.
In addition, IBM revealed new security features for its WebSphere Application Server product. The 6.1 release of the product, IBM said, includes new default security configurations as well as a user registry that can be used for identity management. With new authentication audit capabilities, IBM said, WebSphere Application Server now has received the Common Criteria Assurance Level 4 government certification.
IBM also unveiled a collection of industry-specific data models and workflows that the company said will help customers quickly launch SOA initiatives and implement SOA-related data management services to support such concepts as master data management. The offerings target the banking and insurance industries. IBM officials were not available to say when or whether the company plans similar models for manufacturing industries.
Besides upgrading several products in the WebSphere line, IBM also rolled out several new SOA-related service offerings. IBM Global Services will offer programs to help customers assess their SOA readiness and design, implement, manage, and test SOA environments.
The new WebSphere and SOA services offerings, IBM officials said, will be available within the next six months.
Separately yesterday, IBM middleware competitor Oracle Corp. announced new levels of support for IBM's DB2 database management system. Oracle said a new IBM DB2 Universal Database plug-in for its Oracle Enterprise Manager 10G Grid Control product will allow customers to monitor the performance of DB2 databases as well as Oracle databases. A developer version of the plug-in is currently available, Oracle said.
Oracle also announced plans to strengthen cooperation with IBM around marketing of Oracle's J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP suite. Oracle and IBM said they will increase their investments around building and supporting the reseller network for EnterpriseOne, which runs on IBM's iSeries systems.