IBM is committing £27m to an open source community project that
will develop software designed to help businesses cut the cost and
time to market of e-business applications, including Web services,
the company said this week.
By adopting open source technologies into application development,
companies can more quickly adapt to rapidly changing Web
technologies and business priorities, such as Web services, IBM
said.
"The complexity of building e-business applications has increased
recently and the advent of Web services - the next big thing - will
only increase this," said Henrik Hedeggard, head of the application
and integration middleware division at IBM.
IBM's Java-based open source software, code-named Eclipse, will
enable developers to use software tools from multiple suppliers at
the same time, allowing them to integrate business processes used
to create e-business applications and Web services, IBM said.
IT suppliers are promoting Web services to help businesses build
their in-house IT systems and online applications to customers and
suppliers. Both Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have outlined
strategies for this area, with their respective .net and Sun Open
Net Environment platforms.
IBM believes its open source approach to software for Web services
will offer more to businesses than the "locked in" approach of
.net.
Gary Barnett, an analyst at Ovum, said that while companies need to
decide which underlying structure their
e-business applications should be based on - Java or .net - they do
not have to be locked into one platform.
"Smart organisations can have their cake and eat it," he said.
"They have to commit to a platform but if the software is designed
in a smart way it can interoperate."