ISVs Gear Up WebSphere

Is now the time for VARs to bite the bullet and make WebSphere a core part of their businesses? Judging by the market momentum, the platform looks like a good bet. Dawn Thurston is a case in point. At Champion Solutions Group in Boca Raton, Fla., where Thurston is software-solutions manager, the company has long specialized in deploying IBM hardware, along with its Tivoli products, DB2 database and AIX operating system. It has done great business over the years. But as Thurston sees it today, the prudent partner is getting up to speed on WebSphere, IBM's signature J2EE-based middleware juggernaut, which she has watched ascend steadily to market leadership during the past 18 months. To Thurston, tackling WebSphere is a no-brainer.

"WebSphere is where we are focusing this year because it is a brand that IBM is focused on from a solutions standpoint, and because it's the glue that they are using with most of their software," says Thurston, who in the past few months has initiated extensive WebSphere sales and technical training for her staff. And to further jump-start its proficiency, Champion Solutions Group last year acquired a small systems integrator that specializes in

WebSphere on Lotus Domino solutions.
WebSphere's recent market performance should have VARs taking notice. Just last month, IBM reported WebSphere's fourth-quarter sales had jumped 10 percent over the previous quarter, making it the 21st consecutive quarter of growth for the software stack. IBM has in excess of 9,000 ISVs with applications tuned to run on WebSphere, and in 2003 it signed up 159 developers, most of them new partners, to the year-old ISV Advantage program, according to Scott Hebner, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM ISV relations. That program requires that ISVs commit the majority of their application deployments to run on WebSphere in return for go-to-market and sales assistance from IBM. Daly.commerce, an East Greenwich, R.I.-based ISV and one of the first to sign onto the program by porting its Commerce Catalog solution to WebSphere, last month attributed three new customers, including Terminix International, to its partnership with IBM. Looking ahead, IBM this year is planning to ramp up recruitment efforts to pull in partners of BEA Systems, its rival in the J2EE app-server space. And it is positioning WebSphere as a core piece of its vertical solutions tailored to specific industries.

The Glue That Binds?
And as it turns out, Thurman is pretty dead-on in casting WebSphere as the center of IBM Software's vast software galaxy and as the glue to hold together the company's four other brands: Rational, Tivoli, Lotus and DB2--though most IBMers will tell you they don't play favorites with their software children. Technologically speaking, WebSphere's starring role makes sense. It is the transactional hub in the Big Blue arsenal, providing application-infrastructure components like a portal, app-server and integration framework to augment all other IBM wares, such as Lotus and Tivoli management software. It is also the development and deployment platform for ISVs. Consider Lotus' new Workplace products for collaboration and messaging: They are not based on the proprietary Domino development environment, but instead built on WebSphere Portal in Java. Frankly, if you take a look at a wide swath of IBM's software pieces, you are likely to find WebSphere under the covers.

"I think WebSphere is the planet [at IBM], and all the other brands are satellites," says Jim Murphy, CEO at Principle Software, a longtime Lotus partner who started investing in WebSphere in 2000 through training and certification. In 2003, Principle's WebSphere-based business quadrupled to comprise 20 percent of overall revenue. By 2005, Murphy expects WebSphere work to exceed its bedrock Domino practice.

And yet for all the positive tributes, many VARs still waffle on WebSphere. A common gripe, shared by Principle's Murphy, surrounds the software's complex installation, administration and maintenance. Others complain about the dizzying array of WebSphere-branded products, which sport various disintegrated technologies IBM has picked up through acquisitions during the past five years, including code from CrossWorlds Software and Holosofx. All told, you have a recipe for anxiety among some VARs. By contrast, BEA, while not nearly as complete in its offerings, has long been held up as easier to deploy. Then there's Microsoft, whose appeal lies in a tightly integrated stack.

Says one IBM partner, who asked not to be named: "WebSphere's reputation is that it's the best in terms of everything from reliability, scalability and security. But the fact remains that it is nontrivial to install. I'm talking about 42 disks." And he isn't referring to floppies, but CD-ROMs packed full of megabytes of code.

IBM is sensitive to such criticisms, and has made some significant strides toward simplifying WebSphere Application Server 5.0 and WebSphere Portal 5.0, according to several partners and industry analysts, including Terri Haverstick of Haverstick Consulting, who points to portals as one area that has been improved. In addition, the Express offerings for the SMB space also address the complexity question. And for VARs, the Express allure is going to be another reason to take a look at WebSphere now, according to partners in the field.

"We are seeing a lot more activity focused around WebSphere and WebSphere-based solutions," says Donald Doane, CEO of OpenDemand Systems, a Newark, N.J.-based ISV that builds Web-performance testing tools. "It seems to me it's a critical time for ISVs and solution providers to get on board."

OpenDemand confines its work to WebSphere App Server Express to appeal to a largely midmarket customer base. Internally, OpenDemand is using DB2 Express and WebSphere Application Developer Studio tools. Doane says that even at pure-Microsoft customer sites, his WebSphere-based tools are winning converts.

Solutions, Solutions
There's another major factor that could drive your decisions around WebSphere, especially if you are an existing IBM partner. IBM is completely revamping the way it sells software to place far less emphasis on brands and more on solutions. Instead of pushing individual technology products, such as Tivoli Storage Manager, for example, IBM is preparing its team and partners to speak the language of business to customers, selling sets of functionality that solve specific problems inherent to vertical industries. Such solutions will likely contain several core IBM technologies at their bases, along with software on top that addresses the business process, be it item synchronization in retail or HIPAA compliance for the insurance and medical industries. It's a strategy where WebSphere will almost certainly factor strongly as the transactional hub in the IBM middleware family.

Brad Murphy, senior vice president at systems integrator Valtech, says the changes IBM is making to its software-sales model are crucial. To date, its approach has been "bewildering," he says, with an army of individual technical specialists having to be called in on a sale to discuss each product. It confuses and scares customers.

"If I only have mastery of 10 percent of the WebSphere portfolio, then I really can't help you, can I?" says Murphy, who adds that customers sometimes choose what he considers an inferior product based purely on its perceived simplicity. If IBM can consolidate the WebSphere portfolio, eliminate redundancies and successfully adopt the solutions approach, then partners have a great shot at making WebSphere work for them, he says.

"Right now, an argument could be made for three or four different WebSphere offerings to solve a particular problem," Murphy says. "That's too many. Customers need it simple."