4.8 The WebSphere story 61
4.8
into the client/server arena. However, over time client/server-based networks
became as powerful as the mainframe, and, inevitably, certain business depart-
ments decided to make declarations of independence from the mainframe.
Sales departments did their own thing, call-center applications were devel-
oped in isolation.
Then the Web changed everything again. As businesses--particularly big
businesses--started to port some of their business processes to the Web and
started setting up storefronts, they quickly realized that all of these separate
applications that exist on their own islands of networks or in big mission-
critical systems needed to be connected somehow.
The secret to connectivity of applications lies, of course, in middleware.
Middleware allows applications to talk to each other. It allows mainframe
applications to talk to client/server applications and for front-offlce applica-
tions (e.g., call-center applications) to talk to back-office applications (e.g.,
inventory or supply chain systems).
It's probably fair to say, and most CIOs I speak to these days would agree,
that systems integration is the new mantra for those responsible for business
systems. If "Lost in Space" were remade today, the robot would have an
annoying habit of stating "does not integrate" rather than "does not com-
pute." It also helps to explain why some of the fastest growing software
companies during the past decade were middleware companies: BEA, Com-
puter Associates, webMethods, and--ahem--IBM.
The WebSphere story
IBM has redefined itself not by building applications but by trailblazing into
application integration and middleware. It no longer develops its own appli-
cations but rather does something more strategically important: It develops
and markets the toolkits, components, and methodologies that developers are
ever more reliant on.
IBM's WebSphere has redefined what IBM and corporate computing is
about. It is not unique in its field any longer, of course. IBM has many com-
petitors, and middleware products are becoming increasingly "open" in terms
of the international protocols they adhere to, but it has created something
in WebSphere that is pretty radical. WebSphere
represents
an ethos. IBM
WebSphere is the commercialized product bundle that arose from a develop-
ment project within IBM called SanFrancisco (indeed SanFrancisco still lives
as a product bundle within the WebSphere product family). In 1997 Chuck
I Chapter 4
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