IBM Launch Puts Businesses In Charge Of Product Life Cycle

A direct result of Big Blue's acquisition of Trigo Technologies 90 days ago, WebSphere Product Center 5.0 is specifically designed to manage all product- related information--including descriptions, promotions, pricing decisions, logistics and marketing campaigns for the product's entire life cycle.

IBM formally launched WebSphere Product Center 5.0 last Monday. Dan Druker, director of product information management solutions at IBM, Armonk, N.Y., said it will be available to channel partners immediately; pricing begins at $300,000.

The software's repository, data-syncing and workflow capabilities make it well-suited for large enterprise initiatives around RFID, global data synchronization, B2B e-commerce and partner portals.

"We had found a market where there was no enterprise software yet," he said. "This is all about how customers take their products to market, right up to the end of the product's life."

WebSphere Product Center 5.0 can be used as an authoring environment with the tightly integrated IBM WebSphere Commerce server. Here, customers can amass all the information they need about products they want to promote, create campaign messages, upload advertising and marketing-related images and send results to WebSphere Commerce server to preview how those promotions will look, Druker said.

"You can use Product Center to build the e-commerce site, and use Commerce Center to run the site," he said.

IBM's Trigo-based software also features tight integration with IBM's WebSphere Portal server. IBM envisions customers will use this combination to initially clean and synchronize all product information and then publish that information over portals to large supplier and partner communities.

"IBM continues to tighten the integration of the various products that fall under the WebSphere brand, and they are strategically positioning themselves to reach beyond the enterprise into the midmarket space," said Brian Glidden, IBM business unit manager at NEXL, Peabody, Mass.

ROCHELLE GARNER contributed to this story.