Web conference service

IBM on Tuesday announced a program to encourage business partners to tap IBM's software and consulting expertise to build modular, standards-based business applications. At a customer conference in London, IBM detailed a set of resources that IBM-aligned application vendors and systems integrators can use to build service-oriented architectures (SOAs), a system design for reusing individual programs. IBM will allow partners to get free trial versions of its WebSphere Business Integration Modeler, a tool to help system architects design and simulate applications under development. IBM is also offering partners access to training from IBM's consultants. Some partners can also get access to marketing-related resources, such as joint advertising. Analysts and vendors expect that corporate customers will upgrade systems with an SOA design in mind because it promises to lower development costs and improve interoperability between disparate applications. ***

Microsoft today shipped new technology that will make it simpler for companies to build corporate portal Web sites, the company says. In the process, Microsoft offered a glimpse of how its planned Next Generation Windows Services architecture may be delivered. At its Tech Ed 2000 conference in Orlando, Fla., today, Microsoft executives announced a new technology called "Web Parts," built into a new version of the company's Digital Dashboard software. Microsoft said Web Parts are reusable software components that allow people access to Web-based content. The components use XML (Extensible Markup Language), a Web standard, for exchanging data. The ***

IBM's high-end application server is almost ready. Big Blue will announce at its Solutions '99 developer conference this week that its WebSphere Enterprise Edition is shipping in September. The release of Enterprise Edition will round out IBM's family of application servers, software used by businesses to create their e-commerce Web sites by connecting clients to back-end services, such as databases. IBM previously released the low-end Standard Edition for Web site developers and the midrange Advanced Edition, which supports the Corba and Enterprise JavaBeans programming models. The new Enterprise Edition marries the WebSphere Advanced Edition with IBM's transaction processing software TXSeries and a new version of IBM's middleware tool Component Broker. ***