Next year, enterprise software is going to undergo a transition from loosely-coupled integration between the brokers and adapters of today to the tightly-coupled paradigm. We can expect the application and messaging systems to continue the trend of integration, and a consolidation of the middleware market is predicted in the next six months.
This is according to Henrik Hedegaard, director of application and integration middleware software sales, IBM EMEA. Speaking to ITWeb at the recent Websphere Academy hosted in Sandton by IBM, Hedegaard said Big Blue expects the middleware market to undergo a dramatic shift next year.
"We are going to focus a lot on leveraging our investments we made this year," said Hedegaard, referring to the open source tools program Eclipse, IBM`s new Portal Server, and its acquisition of adapter vendor Crossworld. "We are going to start to get benefits out of these three items in 2002," he predicts.
The Eclipse initiative was launched by IBM to provide a common set of application development tools to other vendors building their own toolsets. IBM gave $40 million worth of software, which represents three years of development for the company, to the open source world. "The tool market is fragmented, and we believe that it will always be fragmented. We took what is common in all of the tools and put it in a workbench."
Hedegaard described the project, which is backed by 150 tools vendors, as "a strategic move. We know that Microsoft wouldn`t do it and BEA can`t do it."
The Websphere Portal offering uses "portlets" - plug-ins for Websphere from various IBM software business units including Lotus - which allow customers to buy pre-built solutions for various portal roll-outs, from simple intranets to complex knowledge management, procurement and ERP combinations.
The Crossworld acquisition bought IBM various cross-platform adapters that allow it to integrate with heterogeneous systems. Typically adapters were standalone solutions that spoke to an object broker (a loosely-coupled architecture), but IBM wants to integrate the two to create a pre-integrated business process management system (tightly-coupled).
The three initiatives represent Websphere`s three aspects: Eclipse falls under Websphere`s build and deploy offerings; the portal fits in with the user experience and reach components; and the middleware initiatives will help leverage existing infrastructure.
"Websphere is very well established in the local market," comments Joe Ruthven, software specialist, IBM South Africa Software, "and it means different things to different people. For some it`s a commerce tool; for others an application server; but it`s definitely in the forefront of the mind. The awareness is there, and now we need to take the next step. We`re going to focus on those three key areas [build and deploy, user experience and reach, and leveraging existing investment], and take that to market."
Share
Editorial contacts