IBM refocuses WebSphere on service-oriented architectures

Computerworld - IBM last week unveiled an update to its WebSphere software line and a set of services intended to assist companies building out service-oriented architectures—a development approach the vendor claims is essential for users to respond to changing business needs.

Bob Sutor, director of WebSphere software, said customers can expect a "multimonth blitz of news" from IBM focused on service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Companies that use an SOA approach develop applications by assembling software components, or services, that define reusable business functions or processes.

IBM's new WebSphere Business Integration (WBI) Server Foundation Version 5.1, the replacement for the enterprise edition of its application server, adds support for the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for Web Services, which Sutor said will help with building SOAs.

The XML-based BPEL can be used to define how business processes interact, including the order in which tasks must be performed and the types of data to be shared. IBM, Microsoft Corp. and BEA Systems Inc. published the BPEL specification in August 2002 and submitted it to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.

Few Users Yet

But with the BPEL standard yet to be finalized, few companies have used it, in part because major vendors haven't released products supporting it, said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. Bloomberg said he expects WBI Server Foundation to drive BPEL adoption among large companies that are customers of IBM's software and professional services. He cited manufacturers as likely users, since they have the sort of business processes that could be automated using BPEL.

Clearly, some IBM customers have been building SOA-based frameworks without BPEL or WBI Server Foundation. Wall Street Access Corp., a Manhattan-based brokerage, drew up its SOA plan about a year ago and built standards-based interfaces using the Web Services Description Language for its market data, back-office transaction, order management, compliance, rules engine and security services.

Peter Underwood, vice president of software development at Wall Street Access, said the firm has no need for BPEL, since it doesn't require workflow management of information. Because of that, WBI Server Foundation would be "prohibitive" at $49,000 per processor, he added. Wall Street Access currently uses the lower-priced network edition of WebSphere Application Server, Underwood said.

New York-based Cendant Corp., however, does plan to evaluate WBI Server Foundation for the message-oriented middleware, event-driven notification and other enterprise service bus types of functionality, according to Robert Wiseman, chief technology officer of the company's Travel Distribution Services division.

Firmly committed to an SOA-based framework, Cendant already has built Web services to expose extensive travel content and functionality from internal and external sources. The company this year hopes to add a host-access network to further consolidate regional travel information, such as rail and ferry schedules, from the proprietary systems of its external partners into a single, service-based object layer that its Web services can access, Wiseman said.