Event
Summary
Extricity, Inc., a leading business-to-business (B2B) software
platform provider, has announced that IBM is shipping the Extricity
B2B software platform as part of IBM's WebSphere BtoBi
Partner Agreement Manager. The two companies announced
an OEM agreement in September wherein IBM licensed Extricity's B2B process
technology to be integrated as a critical component of the WebSphere
Business-to-Business Integrator offering.
IBM
believes that their enhanced WebSphere Business-to-Business platform now
offers a full range of B2B solutions that span customer requirements from
simple connectivity and supply chain integration, to complete e-marketplace
development and management.
"Extricity
and its process capabilities offers a leading platform for B2B relationship
management that provides a high level of interoperability and collaboration
across trading partner boundaries," said Rob Lamb, director business process
management, IBM Corp. "This critical requirement, combined with IBM's
leadership in enterprise integration, creates a powerful solution for
managing the entire range of B2B processes among organizations."
According
to David Cope, vice president of marketing for Extricity, "Extricity is
pleased to extend IBM's WebSphere Business-to-Business product family
with its B2B process engine and look forward to building highly successful
joint customer implementations. The strengthened WebSphere Business-to-Business
platform brings to market a single, scalable integrated platform to simplify
and seamlessly manage real world Internet-based trading partner communities
that are easy to deploy, manage and change."
Market
Impact
Any
vendor possessing a technology sufficiently robust to be incorporated
by IBM into one of their key product suites is going to give competitors
reason to reexamine their product strategy. Many of the EAI and B2B vendors,
including vendors who are pure-play in one of the two technologies, consolidators
of the technology, and new entries to the field, are attempting to jump
on the WebSphere bandwagon, especially by incorporating integration with
IBM's MQSeries Integrator Version 2, and support for the WebSphere Application
Server. (See prior TEC news analyses under EAI for related developments).
As
the line between software for business-to-business and enterprise application
integration continues to blur, (a process already started but greatly
accelerated by the merger of webMethods and Active Software), vendors
must increasingly seek strategic relationships with larger, better-established
firms to add missing functionality quickly. In addition, they must protect
their market share and prevent takeover attempts in this exceptionally
competitive market.
User
Recommendations
Before speaking to any vendor, potential buyers must attempt to understand
just exactly what the differences are perceived to be between B2B, EAI,
and the newest entry to the acronym wars, IAI (inter-enterprise application
integration). Research into the field will yield very confusing answers,
since no one in the analyst or vendor communities can agree on what components
make up which technology. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt reign supreme in
this nascent market, and the customer will have to decide on and stick
to a working definition that fits their business needs. But, on the bright
side, at that point vendor discussions will be much easier to conduct,
and more meaningful dialogs can ensue.
Companies
considering supply chain integration with trading partners, internal application
integration, or a combination of the two, should include Extricity on
a long list of vendors to be evaluated, along with companies such as Vitria,
Tibco, Mercator, Saga, and IBM.