IBM has announced support of open Internet standards for all its
major software products as well as new software tools to help users
connect applications via the Web, creating so-called Web
services.
Products supporting open standards include IBM's WebSphere
Application Server and DB2 database, Tivoli Systems' management
tools, and the groupware products made by Lotus Development, also
part of IBM.
The new software tools are designed to enable businesses to create,
publish, securely deploy, host and manage Web services, IBM said in
a statement.
Supporting open standards, such as universal description discovery
and integration (UDDI), simple object access protocol (Soap), Java2
Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Web services description language
(WSDL), and extensible markup language (XML), eliminates the
expensive custom coding currently required to connect enterprise
applications.
IBM is, with its support for Web services, entering a field that
already has several players, including Microsoft with .Net and Sun
Microsystems with its Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE).
Among the slew of product announcements this week is WebSphere
Application Server Version 4, which through the open standards will
connect with business applications from various vendors, including
SAP and PeopleSoft, IBM said. Version 4, available on 30 June, can
also interface with a public UDDI directory, IBM said. An example
of a UDDI directory is the yellow pages-style business-to-business
directory launched by Ariba, Microsoft and IBM on 2 May.
Tim Hilgenberg, Hewitt Associates chief technology strategist, said
his company chose IBM as its primary e-business software provider
partly because of IBM's focus on interoperability. Hewitt
Associates, a global management-consulting firm, began using
WebSphere last year. Hilgenberg is currently testing out version 4.
Hewitt Associates uses the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)
platform for its Web development. The company had one key legacy
system it needed to integrate with its Web services architecture,
IBM's Customer Information Control System (Cics) transaction
processing system. Finding a platform-agnostic way to make CICS
talk to client systems was key, Hilgenberg said.
"Instead of having to have the clients use Cics to make a
connection, we wanted to provide a more open connectivity. That's
where interoperability and open standards come into play. Clients
want open, unimpeded access to data, and we view Web services as
the way to provide this," he said. With IBM's Web services package,
"it doesn't matter what the client platform is. A Microsoft shop
will have as easy access to the data as a Java shop."
Dave Kulakowski, development and technology manager of Honeywell
International Aerospace Division, and a WebSphere user for two
years, said he's intrigued by the UDDI support promised in version
4. Honeywell's IT strategy focuses on building reusable components
that can be recycled internally and externally, and Kulakowski said
he'd be interested in using the UDDI directory to find outlets for
those components.
Honeywell initially selected WebSphere because of the software's
enterprise JavaBeans support, Kulakowski said. Overall, he said
he's quite happy with the software, although he cited its debugging
and testing tools as its one chink. There are currently no
applications for WebSphere to help programmers track memory leaks,
Kulakowski said.
"If you build code in with a pointer to some place it shouldn't be,
you have the potential of bringing down WebSphere. And we have," he
said. "But I think we'll round the corner soon of getting products
like that."
Other recently announced product updates and introductions include
the WebSphere Studio Technology Preview for Web services, which
will allow customers to build Web services applications and connect
those to existing business processes, IBM said. The software will
be available in a beta version in July and generally available in
September.
In addition, a tool named WebSphere Business Integrator can be used
to manage and integrate the Web services applications, within and
between companies. This software transfers Soap messages from one
application to another to link the applications and manage
interaction, IBM said.
IBM added what it calls the "DB2/XML extender" to its DB2 database
product to let Web services access databases. The DB2/XML extender
is already integrated in DB2 Version 7.2, announced last week. This
latest version of IBM's database product also supports UDDI and
Soap.
Tivoli systems management software will help the user monitor and
secure the Web services chain, IBM said.
A Lotus Web services enablement kit will be posted on the IBM
AlphaWorks site this quarter to help software developers build Web
services applications for Lotus products. Lotus Domino
collaboration, workflow, and messaging capabilities can be accessed
as Web services by adding Soap interfaces and WSDL descriptions to
the software.