SCIENCE

IBM has unveiled new offerings in an expansion of its middleware software portfolio aimed at helping businesses achieve new levels of efficiency, flexibility and cost reductions through virtualization, integration and cloud computing.  These products and services will help businesses to optimize their business processes, strengthen relationships and better integrate their business networks with customers, suppliers and partners

Over the past decade, businesses have gained the ability to tap into and capture vast amounts of rich data that had previously been unobtainable. This data overload is compounded by a new business environment where business processes can span departments and extend to a broad business network beyond a company itself to include business partners, suppliers, subsidiaries, and customers.  These systems can’t stand still:  regulations change, new inventions emerge, alliances shift, companies merge, capital grows tighter and looser.  The business world has become too complex for the human mind to manage by itself.  That's where software is needed to add a layer of intelligence.  Software can provide the clear guidance, direction, and insight that business networks need to function efficiently.  

IBM is providing a context and the tools which business leaders can use to create a dynamic network for their businesses.  New Hypervisor editions for IBM software can help clients speed their return on investment by simplifying the installation, deployment and management of technologies such as WebSphere Message Broker, WebSphere Business Monitor and WebSphere Process Server.  These virtualized technologies work on leading Linux operating systems, enabling higher hardware utilization and faster installation.    They follow best practice patterns to reduce the time needed for set up and deployment and can also simplify deployment into a private company cloud through the WebSphere Cloudburst Appliance. 

“Studies have shown that agile businesses have 40 percent higher earnings per share growth and a 45 percent higher return on their investment," said Marie Wieck, GM AIM. "Successful companies today find ways to optimize their business processes in order to efficiently integrate with customers, partners and suppliers. Using virtualization and cloud computing to control costs and add flexibility to application infrastructure, these businesses demonstrate a proven roadmap to gain greater agility and the business benefits that follows." 

Integrating Business Networks for Flexibility and Growth 

IBM is a leader in providing clients with higher-value capabilities that enable them to better integrate with their network of partners, suppliers and customers.   IBM's new integration software facilitates the sharing of services between domains, providing a single view of services across the entire business network.  This software helps businesses make more intelligent decisions by focusing on the most significant data and events, enabling rapid, proactive responses to unfolding situations and even future forecasted events.  

WebSphere MQ Telemetry can provide enterprise applications and connectivity for instrumented devices and large networks of resource-constrained devices.   This technology can solve real-world challenges including: automated metering; executive alerts; healthcare personal and resource tracking; industrial tracking and visibility; and supply chain and logistics.

One example of such integration best practice is Indian conglomerate TATA Group. TATA wanted to become a pioneer in India’s newly opened direct-to-home satellite television market. To reach these ambitious growth and market penetration goals, the company needed to gain the advantage by launching its offering faster than competitors.  The company also had to launch an entirely new business unit with no infrastructure or existing processes at all. 

TATA chose IBM to build a robust, flexible business model and service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based IT infrastructure to launch the TATA Sky satellite broadcasting service. This “green field” project, in which a business is built from scratch, was the first of its kind in India.   The business was successfully launched in less than six months and crossed the one million connections mark within its first year of operations — the fastest growth rate in world history for this kind of business.  TATA Sky is currently on track to reach a target of eight million connections by 2012.

As part of today's news, IBM is also introducing a range of new products and services including: 

• A new version of WebSphere Application Server migration toolkit which enables clients to migrate business applications to WebSphere from  Oracle WebLogic Server and JBoss Server twice as fast as manual methods, lowering costs and workload;  
• A new feature pack for WebSphere application Server that helps reduce costs through more efficient deployment of batch applications;
• A new version of WebSphere MQ Advanced Message Security that will provide compliance documentation and reporting solution to help customer adhere to their industry requirements;
• A new version of IBM WebSphere Low Latency Messaging that offers an ultra low-latency and high-throughput messaging transport for financial markets;
• The new IBM WebSphere DataPower Cast Iron Appliance XH35  that makes the market-leading Cast Iron Cloud integration solution available on the market-leading WebSphere DataPower middleware appliance hardware platform.