WebSphere Revolution

During this time IBM was holding many small events around the world tailored to various groups from business executives to software architects to promote the adoption of Web services and SOA. At these events, IBM executives from the various IBM software brands and IBM’s services group would describe the importance IBM was placing on SOA. IBM’s intention was to help customers see that SOA was not just the latest industry buzz word but rather a central part of IBM’s corporate-wide strategy going forward. While IBM didn’t invent SOA, IBM was embracing it in a big way and working to ensure that the business world would embrace it as well. The SOA concept began to resonate in the industry and the timing was perfect for IBM. WebSphere already had a great stable of products and more were on the way. SOA was the innovation that could pull all this technology together and help WebSphere, and many of IBM’s other software offerings, become something greater than the sum of its parts something much bigger than it already was. As Tom Rosamilia, then head of WebSphere Research and Development, puts it, “SOA was the culmination of many things that had to come together around industry standards it was a really great message that unified the different pieces we had been talking about.” From a business standpoint, this was a turning point for IBM. WebSphere was going to fully “hitch its wagon” to SOA—a dramatic move for any enterprise software company. There was a lot riding on this SOA bet. During this run up to full support of SOA, there was a growing emphasis on understanding business processes, that is, the day-to-day steps employees take to conduct business such as shipping a package or generating an invoice. This understanding was seen as the key to greater business flexibility. The IT department of a business would build many applications that would leverage middleware, databases, etc. But starting on the IT side of things to define and implement a business process seemed upside down. IBM and its customers began to see the value of allowing a business to start looking at operations from a business process perspective first rather than starting from an IT infrastructure perspective. This thinking was called business process management or BPM. By 2002, IBM already had some of the pieces to the BPM puzzle. There was WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation, work flow technology from the IBM Böblingen lab, and WebSphere Application Server. But IBM wanted to take its BPM capability to the next level. As Kramer Reeves, then a marketing strategist for WebSphere, explains “We decided to recreate a new state-of-the-art product, which became WebSphere Process Server, that was based on the principles of SOA and in addition supported business process concepts like orchestration, work flow, integration, task management, business rules, process states, state machines that would allow customers to really integrate their business processes all in a very flexible, robust, and scalable environment.” IBM made two key acquisitions in 2002 to augment this development effort: CrossWorlds and Holosofx (see acquisitions time line on page 48). More on the Web • SOA Strategy on IBM.com • Book: The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0 (Sandy Carter) “In September 2005 we connected WebSphere to SOA. That really catapulted the brand ” —Sandy Carter, Vice President, SOA and WebSphere Strategy, Channels, and Marketing 2003 Scientists find fossil of new flying dinosaur species in northeastern China. 2003 Scientists discover the existence of “dark matter” in the universe. 43 http://www.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/index.html?S_TACT=107AG01W&S_CMP=wsspecialoffer http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/013195654X/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/013195654X/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance

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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