IBM Develops WebSphere Adapters Market

06/01/2006

IBM today announced that customers using WebSphere Adapters can reduce the time and costs associated with integrating SAP, Siebel, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft applications by as much as 30 percent.

ebizQ was provided with the following details:

The development of the IBM WebSphere Adapters is in direct response to leading analysts’ estimates that application integration is the top IT spending priority for 2006. The majority of this integration is being driven by the growing demand to more closely align business goals with technology. This strategy is known as a service oriented architecture (SOA).

The WebSphere Adapters, used in concert with the IBM SOA Foundation, provide customers with the most connected platform and direct path to building and sustaining an SOA by unlocking and reusing information located in proprietary applications.

Customers using WebSphere Adapters in concert with the IBM SOA Foundation, an integrated, open standards based set of software, best practices and patterns that delivers a clear path to building and sustaining an SOA.

The WebSphere Adapters underscore IBM’s commitment to enabling customers such as Grohe AG and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines to integrate virtually any application without requiring significant recoding or additional development resources.

As a global company and the largest worldwide exporter of bathroom fixtures, Grohe AG’s SOA strategy was driven by the need to more immediately respond to changing market conditions, control costs and gain a global view of operations.

Grohe AG has tapped into the power of the IBM WebSphere Adapters to accelerate the time previously allocated to point-to-point integration of its SAP system throughout its European and U.S. operations. Specifically, the company needed to quickly and efficiently link 14 interfaces consisting of home grown and various SAP-based applications including supply chain management, human resources, finance, production planning, and materials management, for example.

Realizing that the company did not have enough resources to connect existing applications from the mainframe to its SOA within a reasonable amount of time, Grohe AG selected the IBM WebSphere Adapters for mySAP™ and the WebSphere Adapter for Java™ DataBase Connectivity (JDBC) to provide a standard interface to the company’s existing proprietary applications and to simplify the integration of Grohe AG’s information technology assets. Additionally, Grohe AG relies on WebSphere MQ for assured delivery of more than 4,000 daily messages routed throughout the company.

“When we stepped back and realized how much time it would take to migrate our existing SAP system and fully integrate it with various homegrown and legacy applications, we knew that we would not have enough manpower to achieve our larger business goals in the most timely and cost efficient manner,” said Armin von Dolenga, software manager, Grohe AG. “Using the IBM WebSphere Adapters we were able to accelerate the integration process by reducing what would previously taken six months down to a matter of weeks.”

Royal Caribbean International has selected WebSphere software and WebSphere Adapters for Oracle’s Siebel, J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft applications as part of an aggressive strategy to better serve its guests’ needs. As the world’s second largest cruise line, Royal Caribbean has expanded its business to offer land tours in coordination with its cruise vacations.

To expand its business, Royal Caribbean is using IBM software to connect its various legacy sources of information located in proprietary applications as part of a larger SOA strategy. This information includes customer records, travel itineraries, passport data, ship manifests in accordance with government regulations, and online sales. Through WebSphere integration middleware and WebSphere Adapters, Royal Caribbean is assured that information is instantly available, accurate, and accessible from ship to shore.

“To effectively compete and expand our offerings to accommodate the needs of today’s guests, we needed to improve our business strategy and align our technology investments,” said Mike Sutten, CIO, Royal Caribbean. “IBM’s extensive portfolio of integration middleware and adapters are critical to the creation of our SOA because the software enables us to maximize our existing technology investments in proprietary applications and transform our business and maintain our industry leadership. We estimate that we have saved at least 30 percent in terms of time and costs as a result of using the WebSphere Adapters.”

As the service on ramp for existing applications, IBM WebSphere Adapters allow customers to quickly and easily integrate processes that exchange information between ERP, HR, CRM and supply chain systems. The IBM WebSphere Adapters service-enable applications by connecting them to the WebSphere Message Broker that powers an SOA. For customers, this open standards-based approach delivers flexible investment protection, increased cost savings, accelerated time to market, and lowered business risk while also delivering extensive functionality and ease of use.

“As more and more organizations are closely aligning business goals with IT strategy through an SOA, they are relying on an open standards-based approach that will allow them to model, assemble, deploy, and manage new technology while maximizing existing investments,” said Sandy Carter, vice president, SOA and WebSphere, IBM. “Providing customers with business flexibility and a wider array of integration platform choices is at the heart of the IBM WebSphere Adapters.”

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