Return-Path: Received: from isource.ibm.com (isource.boulder.ibm.com [207.25.249.18]) by server1.os2site.com (Weasel v1.73) for ; 18 Nov 2005 08:10:19 +1100 Received: from isource.boulder.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by isource.ibm.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0CB2A13700E for ; Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:13:27 +0000 (CUT) From: IBM Software Group Reply-To: swnewsatus.ibm.com Subject: IBM Software Newsletter Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 To: newsatos2site.com Message-Id: <20051117211327.0CB2A13700Eatisource.ibm.com> Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:13:27 +0000 (CUT)

November 17, 2005, Volume 2, Issue 11

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Welcome to the November edition of the IBM Software Newsletter. If you experience any difficulties viewing this newsletter, you can access it online.

Driving greater value from your information is the focus in this month’s issue. According to the Hackett Group, the average Fortune 500 company has over 48 disparate financial systems and nearly three enterprise resource planning systems.* This results in islands of business-critical information floating in a complex web of systems and databases.

Our feature story introduces you to an innovative IBM strategy designed to free this information and create greater business value. The strategy is called Information On Demand and it helps you develop an information architecture so all of your information assets can be easily used and accessed across your enterprise.

Our clients are already seeing the benefits. The customer spotlight shows you how the U.S. Army is overcoming the complexity of their forms-driven processes and anticipating a savings of US$1.3 billion. And there are other ways to drive greater value from your information. One of our top stories guides you to a text analytics development kit that can help you use your text-based information to improve fraud analysis, customer service, product quality and more.

Enjoy this month's newsletter!

Dan Galvan
Vice President Marketing Programs
IBM Software

	Software Feature Article

		IBM introduces Information On Demand to help you reduce risk while driving greater business insight. At the recent Information Integration Live! event, IBM introduced a new approach to information management called Information On Demand. The new strategy is designed to help IBM customers improve their ability to act on emerging opportunities and competitive threats by integrating and analyzing all types and sources of information throughout the information lifecycle. Information On Demand is driven by customers' needs to manage risk, drive greater business insight from information, optimize processes and infrastructure, reduce complexity and achieve better information control through master data management. Central to the new strategy is the ability to deliver information as services that include data management, business intelligence, information integration, content and master data management services. Master data management services help you maintain a single view of your information about products, customers, suppliers, employees and more. Learn more about the initiative with resources that include new white papers on content management, database management and business intelligence. You'll get an overview and you can get more details by listening to a replay of the "Information as a Service" Internet radio broadcast with Andrew Warcheza, Chief Strategist, Information Management at IBM and Henry Morris, Group Vice President and General Manager of IDC. [More]

	Top Stories

Summit Strategies' Dynamic Computing Industry Report Card will help you grade your IT Services Management strategy.
According to this report card, most of the major IT management software vendors have embraced the IT Services Management (ITSM) vision, but how will they perform in terms of execution in the next year?

Find out which vendors may be nervous about their report card and which may not. The report also provides a good overview of ITSM and how it relates to IT Information Library (ITIL) best practices and how it delivers benefits to IT management organizations. The report looks at the ITSM landscape and provides an apples-to-apples comparison of how well the market leaders are packaging, communicating and executing on the rollout of their technologies. See how BMC, Computer Associates, HP and IBM stack up. From an IBM perspective, the report focuses on the comprehensive rewrite of the IBM Tivoli® code base featuring extensive leveraging of IBM WebSphere®, Rational®, DB2® and Workplace™ portfolios. The report helps you gauge your level of adoption and make more informed decisions going forward.
[More]

Next generation text analytics software helps you drive better results from your text. Get started with a software development kit. Your documents, comments and notes fields, problem reports, e-mail, Web sites and other text-rich information sources can help you detect product defects, fight fraud, improve service and more. The trick is extracting the concepts, facts and relationships in your text-based resources to better support business intelligence and data warehousing efforts. IBM is offering a software development kit based on the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) standards that brings new text analytics capabilities to your application or enterprise. The kit provides you with the tools and resources to develop a wide range of industry-specific text analytic applications that can run on IBM WebSphere II OmniFind™ Edition and interoperate with a variety of IBM Business Partner offerings. Download the kit and learn how to develop applications that enhance the quality of search and bring business intelligence capabilities to your unstructured information. [More]

	Customer Spotlight

U.S. Army looks to save billions with Information On Demand solution.
There is an old saying that an army runs on its stomach. Well, today it also runs on information. And a lot of that information is processed through forms. Read this case study and find out how an Information On Demand solution from IBM is helping the United States Army anticipate savings of US$1.3 billion annually with an automated forms system.

The XML-based solution enables the precise exchange of information between people, applications and systems so that forms are routed and electronically signed quickly and efficiently. This capability keeps the army focused on critical operations and users of the system are projected to save about one third of the time currently required to fill out forms when the system is fully automated. Read the case study and you will also see how this solution will provide the means to develop a single enterprise solution for automating functional business processes across the U.S. Army.
[More]

	On Demand Business

		Reduce risk. Improve flexibility. Take a quick application integration health check. Integrating business processes across your organization is at the heart of becoming an On Demand Business. But this level of integration requires connecting and integrating your disparate information and applications. IBM can help you meet the challenge with a quick health check on your application integration progress. It's a fast, easy way to see where you stand in terms of connecting applications, integrating applications and establishing an enterprise service bus. Get instant feedback and recommendations on how application integration can help you lower maintenance costs, improve your business flexibility and help reduce risks and meet regulatory compliance obligations. You also get real-world, integration success stories from your peers. Download the health check to your desktop and get a direct shortcut to the latest health check assessments and receive automatic updates. [More]

	Other areas of interest

New IBM WebSphere Application Server Community Edition matches open source ease and flexibility with affordable, top-notch support.
Based on Apache Geronimo, IBM WebSphere Application Server Community Edition provides you with easy access to open source-based technologies with no upfront costs. It is customizable application server software that features a small footprint, making it easy to download and manage.

The new application software includes technology from Gluecode Software, which IBM acquired in May 2005. It helps Java developers reduce the complexity of application development by pre-integrating the most common services for building applications. It also offers customers the choice of a blended commercial offering that provides the innovation of open source with greater stability and higher levels of support.

There is no cost to download and use WebSphere Application Server Community Edition. IBM is introducing a full line of associated support services starting at only US$900 per server for an annual subscription. Available support includes a new developer-to-developer support service that allows customers' development teams to obtain support directly from IBM developers.
[More]

Knock out manual business processes and replace them with automated, responsive ones. Get the new guide from Upside Research.
It's a tough fight trying to automate manual business processes. But you have a new guide from Upside Research in your corner.

"Changing Business for the Better: A Practical Guide to Business Process Management (BPM)" provides a comprehensive look at the benefits of BPM technologies and identifies characteristics of BPM solutions that lead to successful BPM and process-centric integration projects. The guide stresses the importance of actively monitoring and altering processes, the role of Service-Oriented Architecture in BPM and capturing and reusing best practices. It also takes critical technical considerations into account such as limiting code development, optimizing processes based on business needs and the importance of standards.
[More]

		Solve problems before they become problems. A new IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 6.1 demo shows you how. This past September IBM announced its new IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 6.1 software with breakthrough visualization and preemptive problem management capabilities. Now you can see the software in action with a new demo. IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 6.1 provides monitoring capabilities necessary for today's dynamic IT environments. It detects bottlenecks and potential problems and automatically helps you recover from critical situations. The software reduces the need for manually scanning through extensive performance data to solve problems. The monitoring solutions feature simple and centralized control, enhanced visualization of information, ease of use and historical and real-time reporting. As a result, you can quickly access the information you need to rapidly identify, diagnose and resolve situations before they can damage performance and availability. Register for the demo and see for yourself. You can also learn more about how IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 6.1 can help BMC, Computer Associates and Veritas customers, OMEGAMON™ users and medium-sized businesses. Plus you can download a white paper with details on the new monitoring solutions. [More]

Crush integration complexity. Integration solutions for mid-sized businesses. Connecting applications in a project-by-project, manual and inconsistent manner can do as much harm as good. It's time consuming from the start and increases complexity and effort in the future. Read a Software Strategies white paper on integration that will show you how consistently leveraging a stable yet flexible middleware platform is the better approach. Learn how you can reduce the time, cost and effort of your integration. You will also access a brochure on application connectivity that will demonstrate how IBM WebSphere MQ software is specially designed to make integration simpler now and later. [More]

		Save US$200 on your Lotusphere 2006 registration when you register by December 2, 2005. It's time to get ready for Lotusphere® 2006, January 22-26 in Orlando, Florida. There is plenty in store for everybody. -- Technical content quadrupled. -- Three times the number of hands-on technical sessions. -- The Lotusphere 2006 Boot Camp delivers a technical conference within a conference. -- See far beyond IBM Lotus Notes 7 with unprecedented insight into future innovations. -- Learn about the latest IBM Workplace solutions. -- Plus the usual outstanding networking opportunities and access to content and experts. These are just a few of the conference features in store for 2006. Learn more and register before December 2, 2005 to save US$200 on your registration fee. [More]

		Online guide to meeting the security and compliance challenge. From protecting your critical information to protecting your organization in terms of local, regional, national and international regulations, security and compliance is a challenge for IT departments of all sizes. What's the best approach to handling more and more varied users? Handling more devices? And at the same time enforce security. And still abide by regulatory demands. And keep costs under control. IBM Tivoli software has answers and solutions. Access this online guide to meeting the security and compliance challenge and get the high-level view as well as the details, solutions and resources that can make you successful. The guide features a focus on HSPD-12, which mandates the development and use of a standard ID credential for all U.S. federal employees and contractors, and other key compliance standards. Read a buyer's guide to getting the right security management solution. Plus, there are many other resources in the guide that can help you create centralized, automated policies and processes to meet the security and compliance challenge. [More]

More news.
Access IBM software press releases and learn about the latest IBM software news, announcements and updates.
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Training news.
Learn more about the latest IBM training innovations and promotions.
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Software success stories.
Access a complete database of case studies that shows you how your peers are succeeding with IBM software.
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Train smart and save up to US$5,000.
IBM Education Pack online account.
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Act now for rebates on IBM content management software.
Qualify for up to US$6,000 in rebates.
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Save now. IBM Rational ClearQuest.
Qualify for savings up to US$27,2100.
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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2005.

IBM, ClearQuest, DB2, Lotusphere, OMEGAMON, OmniFind, Rational, Tivoli, WebSphere and Workplace are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.

BMC is a trademark of BMC Software, Inc. in the United States, other countries or both.

Computer Associates is a trademark of Computer Associates International, Inc. in the United States, other countries or both.

HP is a trademark of Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. in the United States, other countries or both.

Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries or both.

Veritas is a trademark of Symantec Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.

Red Hat and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States, other countries or both.

Other company, product and services names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

* The Hackett Group, cited in CIO, December 17, 2003, http://www2.cio.com/metrics/2003/metric642.html

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