IBM WebSphere Business Integrator is an inter- and intra-organization integration platform. It addresses collaboration between organizations and provides support for integration at the process level, rather than at the application level (which is what MQSeries and MQSeries Integrator are used for). It embeds Extricity's B2B software technology, which includes partner-relationship management components.

WebSphere Business Integrator (WBI) Version 2.1 has been completely repackaged and is now a comprehensive offering. It includes a number of other IBM products:

• MQSeries and MQSeries Adapter Offering
• MQSeries Integrator
• MQSeries Workflow
• WebSphere Application Server Advanced Edition
• WebSphere Studio Business Integrator Extensions (Solution Studio).

WebSphere Partner Agreement Manager (WPAM) is not included in the package and must be ordered separately, since WPAM is required by WebSphere Business Integrator (WPAM manages the public processes in WebSphere Business Integrator).

MQSeries products enable applications to use message queuing to participate in message-driven processing. MQSeries provides transactional assured once-only delivery of the data across a number of platforms (currently more than 35 platforms) and can traverse all the major network protocols, including TCP/IP, IIOP, HTTP, NetBios, SPX, and LU6.2. It supports various communication models: request/reply, publish/subscribe and broadcast.

MQSeries Integrator is an information broker which works with MQSeries messaging. It extends MQSeries' basic connectivity and transport capabilities to provide a rule-driven message broker solution. Messages are composed, routed and transformed according to the processing rules defined by a GUI interface.

IBM MQSeries Workflow is an integrated product suite, based on a three-tier client-server model. The server components may be hosted on a variety of platforms including Windows NT/2000, AIX, HP-UX, Sun Solaris and OS/390. It is a client/server system with a hierarchical network structure. At the root of the network, MQSeries Workflow has the concept of a domain (e.g. a company).

IBM MQSeries Workflow uses a Workflow Definition Language (FDL) for the exchange of process models between the development (“Buildtime”) and the run time (“Runtime”) environments. Third party tools, such as Adonis (BOC), and Workflow BPR (HOLOSOFX) can also generate FDL files, which can then be imported into "Buildtime" or "Runtime". This opens up additional options for organizations that would like to substitute IBM's process modeling tool ("Buildtime"). Third party tools may provide additional features, such as process simulation (HOLOSOFX, for example).

WebSphere Application Server (WAS) offers a comprehensive set of middleware for designing, implementing, deploying and managing Java-based applications. It complies with the J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) specification, which defines an architecture that includes a standardized model for developing multi-tiered applications and a platform for hosting such applications. WAS supports Java clients, applets, servlets, Java Server Pages (JSP) and Enterprise JavaBeans.

WebSphere Studio is a toolset that supports the design, development and deployment of business processes. It allows for the creation of new Web services and the transformation of existing applications. All the artifacts pertaining to a business process can be packaged together by creating a solution package, which can then be deployed in the operational environment.

With WebSphere Business Integrator IBM starts to offer an integrated e-business platform. The figure provides an indication how IBM’s product offerings fit in the “big picture”.

Availability of the Product Evaluation Profile is slated for July 23, 2001.