IBM Positioned in Leaders Quadrant in Several Independent Reports

Four new, independent research reports from Gartner, Inc. name IBM (NYSE: IBM) to the Leader Quadrant in its Magic Quadrants for application infrastructure, which according to Gartner, “includes the majority of runtime middleware, as well as application development and management tools that support the new generation of application styles based on service-oriented architecture (SOA), event-driven architecture and business process management (BPM) technology.” (Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure, 2Q07, June 2007)

IBM was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant in the following reports:

Application Infrastructure for New Service-Oriented Business Application Projects, 2Q07: In this report, Gartner states that “new service oriented business applications require a complex collection of capabilities in runtime-enabling technologies and development tools,” and “the report examines the ability of leading application infrastructure vendors to support such projects.”
Application Infrastructure for Composite-Application Projects, 2Q07: Gartner points out that “vendors competing in this market are large software vendors providing rich suites of general purpose, application infrastructure products that can support composite-application projects (and other project styles like new, SOA-style applications or back-end integration), application integration specialists, vendors of BPMS and players offering specific composite-application oriented development and deployment platforms.”
Application Infrastructure Magic Quadrant, 2Q07: Leaders in this Magic Quadrant “have a full range of capabilities to support all project types in any geographic location and have demonstrated consistent product delivery over a considerable period to meet customer needs. For most enterprises, it is infeasible and undesirable to select a single supplier to satisfy all needs. Conversely, almost any enterprise will likely have a significant investment in products from one or more of these suppliers and little likelihood of removing their dependence on their incumbent suppliers of application infrastructure,” according to the report.
Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects, 2Q07: In this report, Gartner indicates that “the ability to execute in the application infrastructure for the back-end application integration usage scenario primarily reflects maturity and completeness of the product offering, reasonably affordable costs and the presence of a sizeable customer base that reports good experience with the vendor’s integration technology.”
“We believe IBM’s placement in these reports is a direct result of the value we provide to thousands of clients using our SOA offerings,” said Tom Rosamilia, general manager, Application and Integration Middleware, IBM. “We provide this client value by combining IBM’s strengths in business consulting, IT services and software to develop high-value, repeatable tools that help companies optimize and transform their businesses.”
Last month, thousands of IBM’s customers and business partners gathered for IBM IMPACT 2007, IBM’s inaugural worldwide customer event focused on advancing the $160 billion opportunity for SOA through education and demonstrable business results. More than 4,500 IBM clients have modeled their businesses around SOA, a business strategy that helps a company reuse existing technology to more closely align it with business goals, helping to result in greater efficiencies, cost savings and productivity.

IBM now has more than 3,600 partners in its SOA partner initiative and more than 3,800 IBM and business partner software assets are available in the IBM SOA Business Catalog. This resource allows customers to search for pre-engineered SOA technology components that solve specific business problems.

For additional information visit www.ibm.com/SOA.