IBM, J.D. Edwards Step Up Alliance

In a press conference this morning, officials from both companies announced that J.D. Edwards 5 applications, which include ERP, CRM, supply chain management and business intelligence software, will be pre-integrated with IBM's WebSphere Application Server and Portal with embedded security, Lotus collaboration tools and DB2 database. J.D. Edwards chairman and CEO Bob Dutkowsky said the aim of the super-partnership was to bring customers, especially those in the mid-market, standards-based business applications running on reliable and flexible middleware and technology infrastructure in a pre-integrated package that eliminates heavy integration costs and lengthy deployment.

"This is the biggest technology partnership we've announced in 25 years," Dutkowsky said. "The number one priority our customers ask us for is to deliver a more integrated solution to solve their business problems. This partnership will dramatically simplify the efforts that our customers face every single day to run their business."

Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive of IBM Software Group, said 40 percent of customers' IT budgets are being wasted on technology integration, and that the J.D. Edwards partnership would reduce that number with tightly bundled solutions. "Customers are going to get integrated packages that are pre-tested and supported by both companies," Mills said.

The renewed alliance gives J.D. Edwards a sizeable competitive advantage and allows the software vendor to leverage IBM's sales and marketing powers as well as the reach of IBM Global Services, the world's largest IT services firm. In addition, J.D. Edwards will support IBM's Web services and open standards strategy. "We're very pleased with IBM's commitment to open standards," said Lenley Hensarling, vice president of product management at J.D. Edwards. "Web services is a key driver in this decision."

The partnership essentially makes J.D. Edwards IBM's strongest ISV partner in the market. With that, IBM increases its reach into the mid-market and increases its offerings for its middleware and infrastructure offerings. Marc Lautenbach, general manager of global small and medium business at IBM, said medium business market represents a huge opportunity. "For IBM and my business in particular, this is one of the most significant partnerships we've made in the last 25 years, too," Lautenbach said.

The integrated software product lines will run on all vendor technologies that J.D. Edwards currently supports, including Microsoft Windows and Unix environments from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Unisys, as well as the IBM eServer iSeries and its OS/400 operating system. J.D. Edwards said it will continue to offer customers integration and interoperability via its XPI (eXtended Process Integration) solution using webMethods technologies.

J.D. Edwards and IBM also plan to share sales leads and develop joint marketing programs. The two companies will also establish an "Integration Center" to validate and certify various J2EE compliant hardware configurations of the integrated solution packages. J.D. Edwards will begin delivering its IBM-integrated solutions starting in early 2003.