LAS VEGAS, NV, Apr 08 (MARKET WIRE) --
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled the industry's first complete mashup portfolio
for
business, empowering individuals to create situational applications, or
mashups, and to help them do their jobs more effectively and meet the needs of
the emerging real time enterprise. Innovative companies of every size are
beginning
to realize the value of service oriented architecture and possibilities of
Web 2.0.
Today's Information Technology departments are under enormous pressure to
allow business users to interact with information on demand, including text,
audio,
video and data from the Web -- but must often prioritize enterprise-wide issues
ahead of the needs of individual departments and end users. This balancing
act frequently leads to frustration and missed opportunities, and causes
increasingly tech-savvy business users to embrace new, simpler technologies, in
some cases bypassing central IT departments.
IBM understands the challenges of both sides, and has created a mashup
portfolio
to help all types of individual users and teams get the information they
need. The portfolio is centered around two key products: IBM Mashup Center and
WebSphere sMash. Together, these new products enable everyone from the
non-technical business user to the IT Manager to develop dynamic applications to
satisfy an immediate need.
IBM Mashup Center -- for the non-technical line of business user
IBM Mashup Center allows non-technical users -- anyone in a business -- to
literally drag and drop mashup components from personal, enterprise and
Websources to easily create, deploy and share customized Web applications in
minutes. In addition to the ease-of-use, the product also includes the
management, security and governance capabilities that IT departments require.
The IBM
Mashup Center is planned to begin Beta on April 15, 2008.
An early Mashup Center customer is already using these capabilities to
improve their sales force effectiveness. The company is combining core
enterprise ERP and CRM data with a line of business application to show
accounts by region, sales history, customer service incidents and
projectedsales pipeline by product line. Sales reps can then upload their own
planned
travel and spreadsheets of account forecasts into IBM Mashup Center which
generates feeds to allow them to plan their most effective customer engagement
strategy with better insight about the account including external Web-based
information on the customer's business environment and even competitor
activity.
Business users interact with IBM Mashup Center's browser-based tool to
provide easy assembly of new mashups. The software includes a set of
out-of-the-box, business-ready widgets, as well as a catalog for finding and
sharing widgets and mashups. To create new widgets, IBM Mashup Center includes
an easy-to-use development environment to access enterprise systems and the Web.
Users can also take advantage of built-in Web 2.0 community features like
ratings, tagging and commenting.
It also provides the environment for unlocking, transforming and mixing
enterprise, departmental, Web and personal systems while enforcing
enterprise-class
security and governance. IBM Mashup Center stores information feeds from
enterprise sources in RSS, ATOM or XML formats to maximize the types of
information that can be unlocked and remixed. With the ability to merge,
transform, filter, annotate or publish information in new formats, the
software helps create a single view of disparate sets of information in
minutes.
The new IBM Mashup Center Product is powered by intuitive user mashup
capabilities from Lotus Mashups, and information access and transformation
capabilities
provided IBM InfoSphere MashupHub.
According to research firm Gartner, more than 30 percent of Global 2000
organizations will enter a new era of end-user computing via user-assembled,
composite applications created with enterprise mashup environments by 2010. IBM
is building on nearly three years of leadership in the mashup space, and working
with clients, partners and industry organizations to help unlock the value of
the
Web.
"The power of the Web is now in each person's hands," said Kristof
Kloeckner,
Vice President, Strategy & Technology, IBM Software Group. "And businesses are
made up of individuals who can be innovators and problem solvers on their own,
without waiting for, and straining IT support."
IBM WebSphere sMash -- development environment for the technical developer
WebSphere sMash provides an agile development environment that supports
today's
hottest dynamic scripting languages, enables rapid aggregation of disparate
services and feeds, and employs RESTful approaches to unleash critical
information and services found within a company. This powerful combination
allows
companies to use technology to extend the reach of SOA, better align with
business goals and uncover new opportunities to boost productivity or reach new
markets. IBM WebSphere sMash can easily be used to create widgets for IBM
Mashup Center.
For example, a U.S based retailer can use the WebSphere sMash to help
accelerate the start-up of new stores opening overseas. The retailer has new
local partners and employees that need a combined view of internal SOA
services, such as pricing and inventory levels, and external services,
suchas currency exchange rates, and external carrier shipment verifications.
This
consolidated view of information helps the local partners and employees
quickly uncover new business insights, more effectively communicate and provide
consistent and accurate reporting of sales and inventory levels to
headquarters at the end of each quarter.
A developer's version of WebSphere sMash will continue to be available
fromwww.projectzero.org as a free download, while the commercial platform will
be
sold on a per license basis and will be available in the second quarter direct
from IBM and its partners.
IBM's deep history in open standards, information integration and emerging
Internet technologies, make the company an undeniably strong partner in a
new technology era.
To learn more about IBM's Web 2.0 initiatives, please visit:
www.ibm.com/software/info/web20
Media Contact:
Kelly Sims
IBM Media Relations
917-472-3456
kelly.sims@us.ibm.com
Copyright 2008, Market Wire, All rights reserved.
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