WebSphere Revolution

WebSphere evolution began to emerge, shaped by a natural confluence of technology, products, and business needs. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together and WebSphere was about to evolve again. One key piece of the puzzle was IBM CICS (see sidebar on page 21). For decades, the IBM CICS software product had been (and continues to be) the quintessential foundation of transaction processing for IBM customers all around the world. To help move CICS into the world of distributed transaction processing, IBM licensed a monitor/manager function from a company called Transarc and graphed the CICS interface onto it to create a distributed transaction server known as TXSeries®. IBM subsequently acquired Transarc in 2000 and CEO Alfred Spector came over to work for Steve Mills. This helped set the stage for the next step in our WebSphere story but there was more. Another piece of the WebSphere puzzle had been playing out since 1994 in a different part of the IBM Software Division. A team led by Robert LeBlanc, then Director of Object Oriented/Application Development Technology, had been working with IBM Research and experimenting with an object oriented programming project. It was based on some technology inherited from the IBM PC Division designed for distributed computing environments known as SOMobjects®. The group was working to provide an application platform eBay and WebSphere Founded in 1995, eBay Inc. in San Jose, California connects hundreds of millions of people together everyday creating a worldwide online marketplace for buying and selling most anything. Back in 2001, eBay had a decision to make. Their growth had prompted a need to upgrade their IT architecture and they needed to select a foundation for their Website—one that would meet their growing requirements for the long haul. The eBay team considered various offerings including IBM WebSphere, Microsoft®.NET™, and SAP NetWeaver. In September of that year, eBay chose WebSphere because it would allow eBay to develop applications once and deploy them on many different platforms. For IBM, eBay’s decision represented a quintessential Silicon Valley win for WebSphere because eBay was not the traditional IBM customer at the time. It was a turning point in the adoption of WebSphere by a new breed of Web businesses. Today, eBay Inc. has expanded to include some of the strongest brands in the world, including eBay, PayPal, Skype, Shopping.com, and others. eBay now manages over 1 billion page views per day for its Website. WebSphere Studio provides eBay developers with a common tool, facilitating heightened collaboration and sharing of common objects, ultimately reducing duplication of efforts and speeding the development process. WebSphere forms the foundation for a service oriented architecture (SOA), which gives eBay developers the flexibility to create reusable, platform-independent service components that serve discrete business functions. More on the Web • IBM and eBay alliance (press release 9/6/01) 18 http://Shopping.com http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/1097.wss

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of WebSphere Revolution

WebSphere Revolution Table of Contents The Rise of Internet Business WebSphere Takes the Stage WebSphere Application Server Evolves Beyond the Application Server WebSphere and On Demand Business New Flexibility through SOA An Eye Toward the Future

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