IBM intelligent portal technologies bring mid-market organisations into web services world

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Web services are built using open industry standards to bring existing computer systems together with Internet technologies, allowing better information sharing within organisations, and between organisations and their customers and partners. A focus of the event was IBM's latest offering in the portal segment, WebSphere Portal Express, which allows smaller organisations to implement Web services quickly and easily.

'Mid-market businesses in this region are typically reluctant to spend a lot of money on unfamiliar new technologies. Web services are becoming a vital part of any larger organizations information strategy, but are still relatively unknown in the mid-market. This segment needs reliable and easy-to-deploy solutions that will allow them to leverage the Web for immediate business value and better services for their customers,' said Bashar Kilani, Software Group Manager, IBM Middle East, North/ West Africa. 'Portals are a powerful entry point for users to access information systems, but information needs to be presented in a way that does not confuse or lose them. IBM's WebSphere Portal Express is extremely well suited to this market because it addresses that need and lowers the cost of implementing basic portal solutions which can be easily extended.'

The WebSphere Portal Express offering is part of IBM's recently launched WebSphere Express software family, which is designed for the region's mid-market companies and the business partners that serve them. IBM WebSphere Express offerings are priced well below competitive offerings, and are easy to deploy and manage while extending IBM WebSphere's strengths in open standards, security and reliability to mid-market companies in the region.

'This is an attractive offering for the local e-business market as it allows mid-sized businesses and departments within larger companies to more quickly and easily deploy employee, business partner, and customer portals. With only five clicks, a business can install a portal server, allowing customers to build and run a Web site with minimal technical skills. They can also create and deploy interactive Web content quickly via integrated development tools using the latest Web services standards for Java and XML that connect easily to back-office applications and data,' said Tapas Roy, Chief Operating Officer, Raqmiyat.

The software supports a wide variety of platforms including Linux, the
open-source operating system popular with midmarket companies, IBM iSeries eServer, whose principal customer base is mid-sized companies, and Windows.

'With IBM's WebSphere Portal Express offerings, our customers can build personalized Web sites where users can share documents, monitor inventory in electronic catalogues, or check account or shipping updates. This type of integration is a major ingredient in becoming an on-demand e-business -- able to respond quickly, intelligently and flexibly to customer demands and changing market conditions,' said Soubhi Chebib, director of IBM brands, Gulf Business Machines.