Last week, IBM introduced two additional, lower cost Express versions of its middleware products, WebSphere Commerce Express for Web site E-commerce and WebSphere MQ Express, its messaging platform. It had previously announced DB2 Express. The move is making other midrange integration vendors nervous, and is seen largely as a comptetive bid against Microsoft BizTalk server.

Read Integration Vendors Speak On IBM's Mid-Market Push.

Websphere Business Integration Server Suite (Interchange Server) formally is really the product that should be compared to BizTalk. Its both an EAI and a B2Bi Server. Its pretty new so I just thought I'd bring it up.

WebSphere AS and WebSphere MQ is hardly a solution for
small companies whatever the price. Even large companies with multiple
projects that want several small strategic solutions rather than a
single global solution are hardly going to go for this medium to large
sized solution.

As usual I think this is more or a marketing move against MS than
anything else so I can't see the other vendors getting too worried.

If you want a strategic solution with a total CoO of under $50k for the
first three years then use a simple JMS based transport (Sonic MQ, Tibco RV, SpiritWave or even WebSphere MQ) combined with integration components on an "as needed" basis like C24's Integration Objects. With this combination small companies can go from zero to solved in 60 minutes,
medium and larger problems can still be resolved long before your average
IBM solution even starts to appear on the same radar scale.

Try getting an average IT graduate to install and manage WebSphere MQ
and AS in under a week. Small and medium sized companies or large
companies with multiple projects need quick simple solution that can be
integrated in less time that the average PoC. When IBM finally drops
the complexity as well as the price then the other vendors will get
worried.

IMOHO anyway,

-John Davies-

Hi John

WebSphere Business Integration is a suite. It contains WebSphere MQ and WebSphere InterChange Server(WICS) amongst other things. WICS is what I am comparing to Biztalk. Not WMQ and WAS(which are seperate products).

There is now a release of WBI Express (containing WICS) which is targeted for the SMB market.