News

IBM’s SOA How-To Initiative for ISVs and SIs

• By John K. Waters
• July 18, 2005

Over the past 6 months, the number-one question IBM’s customers have asked about service-oriented architectures has shifted, says Sandy Carter, IBM’s VP of WebSphere strategy, channels and marketing, from “What is it?” to “How do I get started?”

"It's a significant shift," Carter tells AppTrends. "You could think of it as a tipping point for SOA. People know what it is, they understand its value to their organization and now they need advice and support to get started."

To make sure that its independent software vendor and system integrator partners have the know-how to answer that question for their customers, IBM launched a new SOA initiative to help its partners who are implementing SOAs, "from neophytes to the most experienced SOA and Web services niche software providers."

The new no-cost SOA resources available through IBM's PartnerWorld Industry Networks include business planning, technical enablement, co-marketing and selling resources aligned by industry and geography, and are available for IBM Business Partners who adopt and endorse IBM's SOA strategy and qualify through IBM's PWIN program.

New resources include an IBM SOA Partner Workshops and Architect Hotline, a no-cost e-learning interactive 3-day session for ISVs and systems integrators to help them develop skills to implement an SOA, leveraging their applications and such IBM software as WebSphere, Rational, Tivoli, DB2 and Lotus.

Siebel Systems was one of the first big IBM customers to avail itself of the new SOA resources, Carter says. "We helped them to re-examine the idea of componentizing their applications, making them into a set of services," she says. "Basically, they picked out a set of functions to start with, and we gave them guidance, provided them with architects and helped them to plot out a strategy for making those functions available with an SOA framework."

The result was the Siebel 7.8 Web UI Dynamic Developer Kit, an SOA solution designed to leverage IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal technology. Using the new UI DDK, Siebel functionality can be deployed as a plug-and-play service in an SOA, allowing developers to reuse the Siebel data model in a Web application.

About 20 IBM partners are involved in the new initiative, including Adobe Systems, Akamai, Bowstreet, Business Objects, Capgemini, Cisco, Cognizant Technology Solutions, CommerceQuest, Cognos, Datapower, Epiphany, Entrust, gedas, Hitachi Consulting, Infravio, Lawson, Open Logic Solutions, Primitive Logic, Prolifics, Reactivity, RIM, Salesforce.com, SOA Software, SSA Global, Strategic Thought, Systinet and Webify, among others.

Check out the IBM SOA portal here.