SeeBeyond Campaign Aims To Entice IBM Customers

SeeBeyond Technology this week showed that it's not afraid to confront the juggernaut of its industry. <P> The application integration vendor kicked off stage two of its "Can't Wait to Integrate" marketing campaign, which aims to convince IBM customers to ditch their WebSphere software in favor of SeeBeyond's Integrated Composite Network (ICAN) Suite 5.0. SeeBeyond launched a similar campaign against rival webMethods late last year. <P> In both cases, SeeBeyond is targeting integration vendors whose product portfolios grew by acquisition. And therein lies the Monrovia, Calif.-based company's strategy: Its 10-module ICAN suite, which was created as an organic whole, offers customers a better, more integrated approach to integration. <P> SeeBeyond's current campaign offers a swap of ICAN modules for equivalent WebSphere products, based on function and price. IBM customers must document the prices they paid for the WebSphere products that they have in production, according to SeeBeyond. Based on that information, SeeBeyond will extend comparable credit for the ICAN counterpart. The credit doesn't apply to support, training or other professional services, and any unused credit will expire on June 30, 2005. Products deployed after that time must be purchased. <P> According to the fine print, the SeeBeyond credit will be less than the list price of the Standard Edition of the ICAN Suite 5.0 module, the list price of the IBM product or the purchase price reported by the IBM customer. <P> IBM customers that want to take advantage of the "Can't Wait" offer have until the end of June to contact SeeBeyond, the company said.