IBM to unveil WebSphere bundle
Ed Harbour, IBM's director of WebSphere Product Management, says the multiplatform software bundle will be priced at 25 percent less than its four constituent products would cost if purchased individually. When purchased separately, the four products are priced in the range of US$1,999 to US$10,000 per processor. Bundle products will include WebSphere Application Server, Advanced Edition; WebSphere Personalization; WebSphere Site Analyzer; and WebSphere Studio, Advanced Edition.
The bundle is targeted at customers who want to "build, deploy and measure the success of their Web sites." he maintains. Users can get a quick read on the impact of their personalization efforts and then make any needed changes to business rules on any on-the-fly basis, according to Harbour.
About 60 customers have signed up for the bundle at this point. While some of those customers already have paid for the software, the others will do so when they enter full-scale production mode shortly, Harbour says.
Other users of the software bundle will include systems integrators such as Montreal-based Nurun and U.K.-based American Management Systems.
IBM's "first significant" bundle for WebSphere Earlier on, IBM had introduced bundles that combined hardware servers with a couple of WebSphere software products, such as WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Studio.
"But this is our first significant software bundle for WebSphere," Harbour asserts. One of the bundles to emerge in the future will be targeted at Web portals, he indicates.
A study released in June by the Giga Group predicts that IBM's share of the app-server market will rise from 16 percent in 1999 to 24 percent in the year 2000, putting IBM in a tie with BEA Systems for the lead.
WebSphere Extended Personalization will be available worldwide starting on Monday for Windows NT, Windows 2000, IBM AIX and Sun Solaris.