Weekly Review: IBM Practices Software Preaching

Last week's news that IBM has launched an "application enablement program" to help independent software vendors (ISVs) create "on-demand" versions of their software sounded eerily familiar to old hands in the ASP business (see Big Blue Moves to On-Demand 'Fast-Track').

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For surely this is the same program that first launched in June 1999 — so far back in the mists of history that Sequent, which initiated the scheme, at that time had not yet been acquired by IBM (see Sequent unveils ASP incubator).

By August 2001, when the scheme was relaunched as xSP Prime, more than 300 software vendors had completed the program (see IBM Adds 'X' Factor). Successful alumni include providers as diverse as leading professional services ASP OpenAir, custom relationship management (CRM) vendor Pivotal Software and healthcare industry behemoth Siemens Medical Solutions.

From its earliest days, the scheme was centered on encouraging ISVs to adopt a Web-native approach — the architectural precursor of what we now know as Web services — and it gradually expanded to embrace Linux and Windows server platforms as well as IBM's own proprietary systems. As well as this technical dimension, it also helped participants prepare appropriate business models for delivering online software services.

Big Blue Taps Infrastructure ISVs
With nearly four years' experience of advising ISVs how to service-enable their software, IBM must have amassed an unparalleled body of knowledge on the subject by now. Yet one of the most interesting aspects of the latest announcements was the type of software vendor that IBM chose to feature as the charter partners in its program: supply-chain software management company Adexa, Internet security software provider Entrust, asset-management software company MRO, and customer management and billing provider Portal Software.

This selection of ISVs sends a clear message that the on-demand software delivery model is not only — or even primarily at the moment — for applications, so much as for infrastructure functions and tools. Oddly enough, I recall mentioning something similar in the August 1999 report, Anatomy of an ASP:

"... the lowest layers of computing at the infrastructure and systems management levels will adapt faster simply because they have less end-user complexity to deal with. Those who want to probe the leading edge of application services should therefore pay particular attention to online providers of storage, security, systems management and other infrastructure services."

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