IBM IMPACT 2008

IBM Smashes up Web 2.0 Collaboration

| Apr 10, 2008 | Application Infrastructure | Show Update

| Analyst: Brad Shimmin

Current Perspective: Very Positive
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: High

Event Summary

April 8, 2008 - IBM unveiled a 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. IBM also announced a new social network focused on advancing service oriented architectures (SOA). IBM's SOA Social Network brings together a like-minded, global community through both online and in-person forums designed to help members build skills and share best practices. And the company unveiled a number of Web 2.0 features within its Portal 6.1 release, which is due out in June.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on IBM’s series of announcements at IBM IMPACT 2008 surrounding Web 2.0, collaborative solutions. The company formally rolled out a number of Web 2.0 capabilities within WebSphere Portal 6.1, announced the creation of a global social network that combines numerous IBM-led communities and introduced a comprehensive situational (mashup) application development, composition and deployment family of products, IBM Mashup Center and WebSphere sMash. Taken together, these announcements further solidify IBM’s substantial leadership position in the portal space. More importantly they signal the company’s coordinated and concerted move to Web 2.0- and SOA-enable its entire product line.

• Vendor Importance: High to IBM, as the company has prioritized human knowledge as a part of its “people process and information” initiative. With these announcements, IBM has built upon the Web 2.0 momentum generated by the Lotus division this January within its broader SOA portfolio. While IBM’s Lotus-led Web 2.0 solutions have not significantly moved the market, the company’s use of those technologies within a broader context to augment applications like WebSphere Portal, which now incorporates Lotus Connections functionality and IBM Mashup Center, which makes use of Lotus Mashups. This serves as proof that the company’s can set aside inter-group squabbling and leverage underlying technologies created in one group as a means of driving customer opportunities within another.

• Market Impact: High on the SOA market, as vendor momentum has stalled over the past nine months concerning the release of new Web 2.0 products with vendors instead tackling the much more modest task of adding Web 2.0 capabilities to existing applications (as with Software AG’s registry/repository). IBM’s substantial collaborative rollouts at IMPACT, coupled with similar, simultaneous announcements by Vignette and BEA will once again elevate the importance of a comprehensive and forward-looking Web 2.0 collaboration roadmap as a means of empowering business users and freeing up IT development resources.

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