iSeries Software Vendors Looking to Open Source Advantage

One of the main drivers in IBM‘s high-intensity push toward open source systems is a program called the ISV Advantage. By working directly with the independent software vendors, or ISVs, IBM is taking the open source mantra to the users, through the trusted application providers. This is particularly true in the small and midsized arena, where companies are showing greater interest in technology. In so doing, IBM expects to increase its own revenue, market share, and development of the on-demand operating environment.

The ISV Advantage initiative debuted at IBM’s PartnerWorld conference one year ago. More than 100 members worldwide have signed on since that announcement, and leading up to PartnerWorld 2004, held February 29 through March 3 in Las Vegas, IBM has been churning out the press releases announcing new team members.

The list of new ISV Advantage members includes iSeries software vendors CMS Manufacturing, Touchtone, daly.commerce, Interchange Solutions, Geac, Vormitagg Associates, and Business Objects, among others. Each ISV Advantage participant is making a commit to open standards and to putting IBM number-one as they go out to their midmarket customers. Like IBM, they are in it for revenue and market share as well, and they are convinced that the technological and marketing assistance that IBM is providing in this arrangement is the right road to be on, not only for their own benefit but also for their customers’.

Central to the Advantage initiative is the ISV embrace of WebSphere Application Server, DB2, all the eServer systems, and Linux. Along with that comes the integration of Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) as the preferred pathway to open source. In exchange for a promise to love, cherish, and obey, IBM vows to deliver technical and marketing expertise that results in advanced product development and a larger pool of potential customers. IBM likes to say that it, unlike other software providers that develop applications that compete directly with their partners’ offerings, collaborates with ISVs to deliver solutions designed to meet the requirements of the ISV.

“IBM is committed to partnering with and providing our ISV partners worldwide with the resources and open foundation to develop applications that meet the requirements of midmarket customers,” says Buell Duncan, general manager of IBM Developer Relations, and inexhaustible WebSphere/open source evangelist. “The interest in ISV Advantage conveys trust. ISVs know IBM has decided not to compete with its application partners. We serve customers with and through our partners.”

Duncan says migrating to IBM’s open-standards-based infrastructure will help ISVs to expand their reach into the small and midsized business market faster and more effectively than would be possible with proprietary platforms. The Advantage program is set up to enable applications designed to run on iSeries, pSeries, and xSeries systems to span multiple computing platforms, including application hosting from IBM Global Services. Software applications offered in a hosted model, IBM says, allows ISVs to give their SMB customers the option of access to “flexible delivery terms” that may better suit their business needs.

Interchange Solutions specializes in the financial services market–banking and insurance–but also has customers in consumer packaged goods and retail, pharmaceuticals, and medical manufacturing. Before joining the Advantage initiative, it already had a CRM product, Maximizer Enterprise for Notes, which was Web-enabled and built to run on Domino. Looking ahead, however, the company foresaw a need that only portal technology could fill. “We saw the problem before we saw the technology,” says Ryan Saunders, Interchange Solutions’ director of business development and marketing. “In terms of enabling our solution, the technology we receive through ISV Advantage is huge.”

Integrating Interchange Solutions’ Lotus Notes CRM solution with WebSphere Portal was, and is, a big technology move. The Advantage program allows the development team to connect with the iSeries team and to benefit from training and have access to offsite testing. Saunders says it helped them get the right solutions and application performance from inception through beta and product release.

The time frame for portal-enabling the product moved along quickly. “As IBM provided the tools to do it, we moved,” Saunders says. “We looked at this project at the beginning of November, training took place later that month, and our first portal-enabled product that we could show our customers was ready at the end of December. Those customers could then take it to sales managers and say, ‘Is this what you are looking for?’ “

At this stage, the product is enabled on WebSphere Portal under the existing Lotus Notes framework, but Saunders predicts that a “full-blown, role-based portal version” will arrive in the second quarter of 2004. At that time, Interchange Solutions will be six months into the ISV program. “We’re looking at adding features that will allow portals for specific tasks such as portlets specifically for sales reps. This is where we found the need before the technology.”

Maximizer runs on any Domino platform; however, Interchange Solutions recommends the iSeries in its installations because, Saunders says, “We found it to be the best in terms of reliability and performance.” That publicly spoken opinion may be part of the sweetheart arrangement built into the Advantage initiative, but Saunders went on to indicate that his company has had some success with customers who have consolidated servers on the iSeries, and by doing so those customers saved enough money to basically pay for the CRM system.

“Server consolidation can become a cost justification for a CRM project,” Saunders says. “That’s one reason why we recommend iSeries. When you get into server consolidation, there’s a lot of work involved in justifying it, assessing what you need, what you have, and after you go through all the cost justification does it make sense. Not enough companies go through it.” Server consolidation factors into 10 to 15 percent of the CRM projects Maximizer is involved in, Saunders says.

As one of the first companies to join the ISV Advantage program, daly.commerce has integrated IBM middleware into key areas of its application architecture. In this case, the result is an open-standards-based catalog management system, which daly.commerce’s chief technology officer, Carl Macedo, says will allow users to automate their business processes and to avoid being locked into a single platform.

The company already has midsized business customers benefiting from solutions born of the ISV Advantage cooperative effort.

“Our immediate goal was to provide the user with our entire product line with real-time price and availability,” says Jeff Graham, vice president of JR Graham, one of daly.commerce’s clients. “The first day we went live, our customers had access to 100 percent of our product line, interactive ordering, live status of their orders, and current pricing and availability, with no manual intervention. We feel that we have taken a gigantic step forward this year.”

The automated process has also provided greater inventory control and accuracy for Terminix International, the pest-control company, and Crest Industries, an automotive parts and supplies distributor, Macedo says.

The two supply chain collaboration product lines that benefited from daly.commerce’s involvement in the Advantage program are the iSeries-based product called Application Plus, and Commerce at Work, which is equivalent in feature functions and structure but runs on Windows, Unix, and Linux. Approximately 80 percent of daly.commerce’s customers run Application Plus.

“We wanted to get our in-house folks all moving toward a consistent development platform,” Macedo says. “We had folks coding in several different languages, and we wanted to make it simpler. We also wanted to adopt a technology that could run in an open and a native iSeries environment.” The current release of Application Plus is Version 6, which was rearchitected in RPG IV free form and is in the process of gaining ILE components. Macedo says IBM was instrumental in getting this project up to speed.

“We found that IBM’s partnership has been instrumental in our successful rollout,” Macedo says. “We allow customers to shrink warehouse space and sell more products. We also improve cash flow and collection of receivables. After we show customers the business value, we show them the technology value of WebSphere, which provides many different options as they progress.”

“Down the road we are looking at WebSphere Commerce and the Portal server offerings. When our development schedule brings those projects to the forefront, IBM is backing it up with resources that we need in order to help with the integration process.”

This article has been corrected since it was first published. Ryan Saunders is the director of business development and marketing for Interchange Solutions, not Touchtone, as originally stated. Interchange Solutions produces a product called Maximizer Enterprise for Notes, which is in the process of gaining portal technology as a result of the company’s involvement with IBM’s ISV Advantage initiative. Guild Companies regrets the errors. [Correction made 2/10/04.]