News

Candle bundles WebSphere tools, services

• By Michael W. Bucken
• November 20, 2002

Candle Corp. (http://www.candle.com) next week will unveil several packages of bundled tools and services that officials said are aimed at various IT departments to help organizations better utilize IBM's WebSphere offerings during the different phases of the development life cycle.

''We are pulling together all the tools and services to let [IT organizations] buy WebSphere tools from a single vendor,'' David Caddis, Candle vice president and general manager of application infrastructure management told eADT. Caddis said eight fixed-price packages for infrastructure, development and operations units will begin shipping next week. The bundles are priced from about $17,000 to just under $100,000, he said.

A so-called ''starter pac'' designed to help IT operations staff to initiate WebSphere performance monitoring, priced at less than $1,000, will begin shipping within months, he added.

Candle extended its business from systems management software to middleware tools and services (first for IBM's MQ Series message-oriented middleware that is now a part of WebSphere) several years ago. Caddis said the integration offerings, along with a fledgling service-level management business, are currently fueling privately held Candle's growth engine. He said the firm expects to concentrate its integration business mostly on WebSphere in the coming months with limited extensions to Microsoft's emerging .NET-based integration offerings.