IBM unveiled WebSphere Application Server, Enterprise Edition 3.0 (WSASEE), a new edition of the integrated server suite that brings together several previously separate technologies, on July 20 at its Solutions ’99 conference in Las Vegas. WSASEE, aimed at the enterprise Web and application developer, will sell for $35,000 per CPU. The package includes MQSeries, VisualAge for Java 3.0, the Component Broker, Encina, TXSeries transaction-processing monitor technologies, and WebSphere, Advanced Edition. IBM expects to ship this product in September for Windows NT and IBM AIX, with a version for Sun Solaris to follow. WSASEE 3.0’s Enterprise JavaBeans runtime engine, which lets you build JavaServer pages, supports entity and session beans and container and bean persistence consistent with the 1.17B specification. By extending object support to Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Encina, this runtime engine lets you develop non-Java components. The package provides complete support for COM when the software runs on Windows NT and Windows 2000 (Win2K) servers. WSASEE lets you create multi-tiered distributed transaction-oriented systems for the Web and link to enterprise databases such as DB2, Oracle, and SQL Server, as well as to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and messaging systems. The suite includes connectors to the Information Management System (IMS), MQSeries, and SAP R/3. By providing a toolbox for high-volume transaction systems, IBM provides connectivity to legacy systems while catering to its large enterprise accounts that are building component-based systems. WebSphere Application Server gives you dynamic content presentation, and the Advanced Edition lets you create application components. The new Enterprise Edition adds component integration and additional Extensible Markup Language (XML) support. IBM officials noted that you can manage all these components from one management console under the Tivoli network management suite. As IBM made this announcement, the Sun/Netscape alliance unveiled its iPlanet enterprise application software for the first quarter 2000, and its family of server software for starters, ISPs, and the enterprise for the fourth quarter 2000. Other offerings expected next month are Netscape’s Netscape Messaging Server 4.1 and Sun Microsystem’s NetDynamics 5.0.1. Microsoft’s COM+ technology, which competes with Enterprise JavaBeans, ships with Win2K and should have a strong adoption. But IBM’s suite will interoperate with all these technologies. You can find more information about the WebSphere family of products at http://www.software.ibm.com/webservers/.
