webMethods announced that the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury, selected webMethods Fabric as the foundation of a business systems modernization initiative designed to increase the speed and efficiency by which the IRS processes over 224 million tax returns annually.  Led by the bureau's Modernization and Information Technology Services (MITS) division, the initiative will leverage webMethods Fabric to fully integrate the multitude of existing and future IT systems deployed throughout the IRS.  As a result, the bureau also expects to benefit from enhanced productivity as critical application functionality will be more quickly deployed as readily invoked Web services.

Working with Government Acquisitions, a leading technology solutions company and a Treasury Commercial Vehicle (TCV) contract holder, the IRS procured webMethods Fabric after a competitive bidding process among several integration vendors.  webMethods Fabric offers the richest and most complete capabilities for deployment, orchestration, and optimization of Web services via a service-oriented architecture.  webMethods Fabric also offers embedded support for numerous industry standards and the demonstrated ability to easily and quickly integrate legacy, J2EE and .Net applications, despite their inherent technology differences.  The speed with which organizations can deploy webMethods Fabric as a fully operational SOA is another key differentiator.

The business systems modernization initiative is expected to help the bureau modernize its IT portfolio through the retirement of obsolete or redundant systems, and will utilize Web services to enhance the exchange of information between many different applications.  As such, the program also expects to reduce the cost of developing additional application functionality, and to reduce the expense associated with ongoing maintenance.  webMethods intends to support these goals by utilizing webMethods Fabric to construct a comprehensive service-oriented architecture which will allow operation and utilization of many disparate information resources as a single, fully unified platform.

As explained by industry analyst firm Gartner, Inc. [Guidelines for Implementing Service-Oriented Architectures in Government (March 21, 2005)], "Service-oriented architecture is a key enabler for governments to create 'joined-up' or horizontal e-government.  It allows governments to leverage common line-of-business opportunities as well as creating efficiencies for overall IT services."

"The business modernization initiative, led by the IRS' MITS organization, expects to deliver a significant and positive impact on the IRS' operations.  We're proud to be a core member of the Government Acquisition's team supporting this effort," said Tammy A. Janorske, director, Government Business Unit, webMethods Inc.  "This award adds to our momentum in the government sector, where webMethods continues to provide solutions for enabling government customers to share critical information more effectively and efficiently within diverse and distributed environments."

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