The IBM WebSphere family of products can be a lot of different things to different people, and – just like any family – each member has it sown strengths and weaknesses.

Some are fully developed and mature; others are just starting out. Each member has its own way of doing things and of working with other members of the family. Some members are very cooperative and eager to work with outsiders; others stay close to the family.

The most important part of the family, though, is not the software itself, it’s the people who design, build, customize, deploy, and administer the software. Without all of you...there would be no WebSphere.

The professional life of a talented group of men and women at IBM is entirely focused on WebSphere and literally thousands of companies have joined the family to help deploy, customize, administer, and create their own applications that run with it. There are presently over 20,000 installations worldwide that have chosen WebSphere for their company’s mission-critical applications. These customers are people, too.

The “family” is, of course, in reality a suite of software products for developing, testing, and deploying e-business applications. Built on industry standards, such as Java and XML, and able to run on all major operating systems, such as Linux, NT, AIX, HPUX, Solaris, AS/400, S/390, NetWare, OS/2, and Windows 2000, WebSphere allows the integration of e-business apps with data on 35 different platforms and a multitude of third-party applications.

The WebSphere family brings together many of IBM’s technologies with additional products and technologies from business partners. WebSphere contains a deep, J2EE-compliant implementation of leading open standards technology (including the latest Web Services specifications) across a wide range of platforms, and complies with existing standards such as XML and UDDI, as well as with open technology platforms like Linux.

WebSphere Developer's Journal will bring you insights and examples each month from the industry’s leading experts from inside and outside IBM to help you to get everything to work, connect, and scale in the environment you’re working in.

In the coming months, we'll focus on the foundation upon which everything is built – the WebSphere Application Servers and MQSeries products. These help provide the core functions of handling transactions and extend to back-end business applications. They also integrate business processes and applications and deliver them to the Web using Java-based application environments for building, deploying, and managing Web applications.

We’ll also focus on the foundation extensions, including tools like VisualAge for Java, the IDE and toolset used to build business logic and connect to back-end data without having to write middleware code; on WebSphere Studio, the toolset for Web site developers building Web apps in a team environment; and on the WebSphere EveryPlace Suite, which helps connect Web and enterprise data to a wide range of non-PC devices, including wireless handsets, PDAs, and other Internet appliances.

We'll examine the WebSphere family's capabilities for security and systems management and we’ll visit the Development, Presentation, and Deployment extensions and the Application Accelerators. Most importantly, we’ll be looking regularly to the people behind the projects – the designers, the developers, and the administrators of WebSphere – to share their success stories. WSDJ wants to showcase just how good some of you are at what you do!

Our overall focus will be “WebSphere at Work” – that is to say, at work in real installations, from the initial business challenge through the production system in use today. With over 20,000 WebSphere installations worldwide, we’re expecting to hear from quite a few of you nominating your own interoperable e-business applications, from simple Web serving to the most sophisticated transaction-based solutions.

WSDJ's publisher, SYS-CON Media, also publishes giants of the Internet technology world, Java Developer’s Journal, XML Journal, and Web Services Journal, the world’s leading Java, XML, and Web Services publications. As the newest member of the flourishing SYS-CON i-tech stable, we at WebSphere Developer’s Journal have big footsteps to follow.

We fully expect WSDJ to become the leading WebSphere publication in the world. So whether you are a developer, an administrator, or an enterprise manager, we will strive in the coming months to make WebSphere Developer's Journal a part of your WebSphere family.