WebSphere 5 Finally Ships

Computerworld - IBM caught up to its competition last week with the delayed release of a new version of its WebSphere application server that features support for Web services technologies and the latest version of Java 2 Enterprise Edition.

But the delay isn't expected to bother IT shops that are already using WebSphere. When IBM announced Version 5 in May, several customers said they were still using Version 3.5 and were in no great hurry to jump to WebSphere 5.0 because of the time and testing required to move mission-critical applications to a new platform .

"Customers are still trying to digest the last release they got," said Susan Aldrich, an analyst at Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group Inc. "They're not in a hurry for more releases sooner."

Analysts said WebSphere 5, which was due in the third quarter, will bring IBM up to par in terms of J2EE and Web services support and in line with BEA Systems Inc.'s WebLogic 7.0, which shipped in late June. IBM and San Jose-based BEA are the market leaders in the application server market.

Ahead in Support

But Stefan Van Overtveldt, program director of WebSphere technical marketing, said IBM not only complies with J2EE 1.3, but also supports a majority of the J2EE 1.4 features that are due to be finalized next year. He said IBM also added support for Web services technologies that it donated to the open-source community.

Explaining the WebSphere delay, Van Overtveldt said top customers told IBM they wanted to get the WebSphere Studio developer tool, which had been due in November, prior to the application server. So IBM flipped the product schedules and finished the tool first, which is integrated to work with the application server, he said.

"The delay really only matters to the most cutting-edge of developers, and that's [IBM's independent software vendor] partners," said Josh Walker, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. He said IT managers "could care less."

Randy Mowen, director of data management and e-business architecture at the San Clemente, Calif., office of The Bekins Co., said his company is testing a beta version of WebSphere 5.0 in a development environment but sees no urgency to deploy it in production.

"Nothing is broken that this [new] release is going to fix," Mowen said.

Bekins has one server running WebSphere 4 and two servers running WebSphere 3.5 to support its homegrown browser-based applications for registration and order, inventory and transportation management systems, Mowen noted.

But Mowen said Bekins will consider moving quickly to WebSphere 5.0 if it delivers on its promises of performance boosts, administration improvements and tool integration that could help developers code and test applications faster and set up and deploy Enterprise JavaBeans and Web services more easily.