Websphere News Desk

Novell and Red Hat Join IBM Open Source Strategic Alliance Program
Novell and Red Hat have been elevated to IBM's Strategic Alliance program -- IBM's highest tier partner status, according to a recent IBM announcement. The move will make it simpler for clients to acquire open standards-based Linux hardware, software, and services through integrated and streamlined sales, distribution and services channels.

Inclusion in the program opens significant new channels and access to IBM innovation centers to Novell and Red Hat, including those in emerging countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and Korea, IBM says, "to drive more open source deals in those booming markets."

Other results of the move include new subscription models combining IBM offerings with Novell and Red Hat solutions; support by Novell and Red Hat of IBM's open platforms including the Java-based Apache Geronimo web server and Apache Derby database; and continued support of the Eclipse development platform.

"The companies are (also) reinforcing their commitment to the Java community, which comprises more than six million developers worldwide," IBM said in an official statement. "Additionally, the companies will help customers begin to deploy Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) based on a J2EE application environment."

IBM says this announcement represents the most significant elevation of IBM's strategic partnerships with its key Linux Distribution Partners since it embraced Linux six years ago. The company cited figures from IDC that show that the overall Linux marketplace is growing annually at 26 percent, and expected to reach $35.7 billion by 2008."IBM made a big commitment to our customers and our open source strategy when we told the world we were making a substantial investment in Linux nearly six years ago. That included partnering with Red Hat and Novell," said Mark Elliott, general manager, Global Solution Sales, IBM Sales and Distribution. "Our customers responded with incredible enthusiasm and today IBM's Linux business is growing faster than the industry. And that growth is propelling Novell and Red Hat to the top tier of IBM's strategic alliance partners."

IBM also says it now ranks number one in overall Linux-based server revenue worldwide with 29.7 percent of the revenue, up 32 percent year-to-year, according to Gartner, an industry research firm.

One- and three-year Linux server subscriptions will be available on IBM server hardware, or with IBM middleware, and IBM Services' SupportLine offerings, providing support for the Linux operating system running on both IBM and non-IBM server hardware.

The new subscription model is aimed at benefiting IBM's large enterprise and small and medium business (SMB) clients desiring to purchase operating system subscriptions and support as part of a more comprehensive industry-specific solution from IBM.

Under the terms of the Strategic Alliance agreement, Novell has agreed to distribute the Apache Geronimo open source J2EE application server as part of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server distribution, which contains more than 1,400 open source software packages. Novell currently includes the Apache Derby database in SUSE Linux 10.0.

The software provides mid-sized businesses, departments in large enterprises and Business Partners with access to open source-based technologies with no up-front costs. Red Hat will work with IBM to certify IBM's version of the Geronimo application server -- WebSphere Community Edition -- for Red Hat offerings and Red Hat will also support IBM's efforts to promote Apache Geronimo. Novell plans to include Apache Geronimo in its next SUSE Linux Enterprise Server distribution to be delivered in 2006, and Red Hat will support IBM in its efforts to promote Apache Geronimo. Both companies have also agreed to help promote Apache Derby, a Java-based relational database that IBM contributed to the open source community in August 2004 to help developers more easily build and deploy applications and workloads that require an embedded database. Examples of such solutions include small Web sites, point-of-sales systems, local registries and repositories, and small departmental applications.

Covansys Launches IBM WebSphere Concept Center
Covansys has created Concept Center for IBM Websphere DataStage, in partnership with IBM, "to strengthen its offerings in the Business Intelligence Practice with respect to 'Real-Time Information Integration' capabilities," the company says.

Incubated as part of the Business Intelligence Center of Excellence, the center will develop and provide Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence solutions to extend into the Real-Time Information Integration space, which global customers across different industries were demanding, according to a Covansys statement.

The Covansys Concept Center supplements the existing Covansys WebSphere Innovation Center, and will be "a key facility to consult, design and architect Real-Time Information Integration frameworks and advise its customers on best practices for the design, development and deployment of BI frameworks, which were scalable and also flexible to address changing business demands," according to Covansys.

The center will host a lab environment for Covansys' consultants to train on and experience different implementations of DataStage for and on behalf of their customers, providing customers a practical view as they embark on the On Demand journey. Covansys will also work closely with IBM on latest versions and advanced blueprints, validate them against real-life customer scenarios and provide feedback to IBM.

Prolifics Focuses on SOA Web Services and J2EE Migrations to IBM WebSphere
Prolifics has a dedicated practice around technology migrations to IBM WebSphere from other J2EE application servers, such as BEA WebLogic, Oracle Application Server, Sun iPlanet, or JBoss. Prolifics can also adapt applications to support multiple application servers from the same code base., the company says.

Having conducted dozens of migrations, the company has also built a knowledgebase of compatibility and functional differences, as well as best practices around migration techniques. The company says it leverages its expert consultants with experience, tools and a methodology that avoids unnecessary risk, time, effort and cost. Also, as one of IBM's highly-specialized WebSphere Portal Service Providers, Prolifics specializes in delivering high-performing and scalable Portal solutions which include:

• Employee portal
• Corporate extranet
• Partner portal
• Customer self service
• Executive dashboards
• Collaborative workspace
• eGovernment portal
• B2B/B2C portals

Prolifics delivers portals with the goal to achieve a unified, personalized and collaborative experience for both employees and customers that streamlines businesses and improves customer and partner experiences. Portals provide a single point of interaction for applications and content, the company points out, as well as a customized and personalized view based on role, single sign-on to all of those applications, collaborative capabilities, workflow automation, sharing of content and documents, and customer self-service capabilities.

Instantiations Leverages IBM WebSphere and Eclipse Alliances
Instantiations leverages its deep proprietary technology base, enterprise software market experience, and world class technical expertise to provide performance enhancement products and services to software professionals who are building, deploying and managing a range of Java systems from stand-alone to fully distributed multi-server e-business applications.

Individually and as a group, the Instantiations team has been responsible for many significant technology firsts and accomplishments: Development of JOVE, the first Optimizing Native Compiler for Java Technology; Development and marketing of the first commercial Smalltalk development environment; Creation of a market dominating line of GUI building tools for Smalltalk; Creation of the first commercial generation scavenging garbage collector; Development of one of the first optimizing compilers for Pascal.

The company's CodePro AnalytiX, for example, with more than 700 rules and metrics, delivers a rich set of continuous collaborative code analysis (C3A) tools that analyze and improve your Java applications. CodePro AnalytiX is easy to install, intuitive, and helps developers improve the quality of their code while increasing productivity, the company says.

CodePro AnalytiX provides features like code audit, metrics, JUint test generation, code coverage, dependencyanalyzer, Javadoc repair and team collaboration.These unique tools automate manual tasks, offer immediate feedback and streamline development activities. What had been time-consuming tasks are, with CodePro AnalytiX, carried out with a few keystrokes, freeing you to spend time on the more creative aspects of software development.

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