The WebSphere B2B Integrator is a competitor to Microsoft's BizTalk Server, which was announced a year ago. Both products are scheduled to ship mid year and will compete in the growing market for XML technology, a favourite among corporations for linking applications with trading partners.
Even though Microsoft hasn't shipped a product, a recent survey of IT managers by Zona Research found the company was the most influential vendor driving deployment of XML. Running just behind Microsoft were Sun Microsystems, IBM and Oracle.
Pioneering companies such as WebMethods, Bluestone Software and Excelon (formerly Object Design) formed the second tier, despite having XML servers on the market for a year, the survey showed.
Looking to bump Microsoft from the lead position, IBM plans a big marketing push this week at its WebSphere 2000 developer conference in Miami, where the company will unveil the B2B Integrator and VisualAge Application Rules, a new development tool for building e-commerce applications.
Inside the B2B Integrator
The B2B Integrator is part of a collection of software 'Big Blue' describes as a complete infrastructure for business-to-business electronic commerce. Those products include the WebSphere application server and MQSeries messaging middleware.
The new XML server is the first implementation of IBM's Trading Partner Agreement Markup Language, a set of extensions that take XML beyond a simple data transport protocol to include capabilities that enable companies to integrate business processes, workflow, security and other services into a B2B transaction. IBM has submitted tpaML to the international standards body OASIS.
tpaML is a key technology in IBM's Business-to-Business Protocol Framework, or BPF, a blueprint for electronic commerce and a competitor to Microsoft's BizTalk initiative, a standardisation effort that has collected more than 130 schemas by which companies in vertical markets can implement XML-based applications.
Even though tpaML and BizTalk are open to any company, industry experts believe the winner in the XML market will likely be determined by which technology is most widely adopted.
IBM's VisualAge Application Rules, scheduled to ship in the second quarter, leverages Versata's business rules automation system. Business rules are defined in a meta-data repository and are compiled into standard Java components.
The new VisualAge tool targets non-Java developers, such as database administrators or client/server developers, looking to deploy applications in high-transaction Web sites on the WebSphere application server.
