IBM Launches Hardware, SoftwareIBM Launches Hardware, Software

Despite tough times, IBM continues to charge forward. The company's stock price has remained in triple digits for the past five months, second-quarter earnings were up, and new market data indicates it's gaining ground in the server market. Last week, IBM unveiled a slew of new products that could further boost its fortunes.

IBM this fall plans to introduce a four-way server based on Intel's forthcoming Foster MP chip for multiprocessing systems. The servers will be the first to use IBM's Summit chipset, which borrows features from high-end IBM servers. A high-speed interconnect will link as many as four of the new servers together to create a virtual, 16-processor unit. "The days of the big, monolithic server are over," says Jim Gargan, marketing VP for IBM xSeries. He says IBM wants to embrace modular technology and thus will phase out its xSeries 430 server, which contains up to 64 processors in a single box. Pricing wasn't available.

Research firm Gartner Dataquest said last week that IBM in the second quarter boosted its share of total revenue in the U.S. server market to 28.6% from 19.1% a year earlier. By contrast, Sun Microsystems dropped to 20.7% from 22.4% and Dell Computer fell to 10.5% from 11.3%.

Adding to its software portfolio, IBM last week unveiled WebSphere Commerce Analyzer Advanced Edition, designed to give online retailers greater insight into customer behavior. The software lets marketers pull data from IBM's WebSphere Commerce Suite to study buying trends. With the advanced edition, companies can determine the split between new customers and repeat buyers, or measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Internet retailers will now be able to "demonstrate the selling effectiveness of their Web sites, which is key for any E-commerce application," says Brook Foust, a senior analyst with Doculabs, an industry-analysis firm.

WebSphere Commerce Analyzer Advanced Edition includes IBM's DB2 database, Intelligent Miner data mining tool, and online analytical processing and data warehousing software. Starting at $130,000, the package is available now for Windows 2000/NT. An AIX version ships Sept. 14.

IBM also disclosed plans to integrate by early next year its Lotus K-station portal, Lotus QuickPlace collaboration software, and WebSphere Portal Server to create a single extranet framework. "Customers see merit in each [portal] product, but they're definitely not going to buy both," says Scott Eliot, a K-station product manager for Lotus. Pricing wasn't available.

On Aug. 28, IBM will ship WebSphere Studio version 4 development tools for building Java server pages for the WebSphere platform. WebSphere Studio will be priced at $599 and $1,999 for the professional and advanced editions, respectively.

The new release lets developers build apps that can be called from a Web browser or another application using the Simple Object Access Protocol, an emerging Web-services standard. Soap is used for sharing data between applications based on XML.

-- With Rick Whiting and Antone Gonsalves