IBM Further Integrates Ariba Products Into WebSphere, MQSeries
After suffering through an April highlighted by a slew of layoffs and lower-than-expected second-quarter revenue, Mountain View Calif.-based Ariba is looking to start anew in May. And it did so by announcing Tuesday that it had expanded a previous alliance with IBM.
In March of 2000, IBM and Ariba entered a working relationship to port Ariba business-to-business e-commerce products to IBM hardware and software. Now, IBM will be adding support for Ariba products to its WebSphere integration software, including MQSeries enterprise application integration technology, WebSphere Application Server, and WebSphere BtoB Integrator.
By extending its relationship with IBM, Ariba is hopeful it can begin to get its business back on track. Ariba, which promoted president Larry Mueller to the position of CEO Monday, has fallen victim to slower-than-expected adoption rates for business-to-business exchanges. In turn, the company cut its workforce by 700 employees at the beginning of April and since has been looking for ways to effectively get its products to market. Continuing its work with IBM is one such effort.
As the leading form of message-oriented middleware, the MQSeries of products should help drive sales for Ariba’s products. Ariba Buyer is an adapter IBM has developed for MQSeries that allows the Ariba Buyer product to integrated into a customer’s back-end ERP systems. Through this extended alliance, IBM will continue to develop adapters for integrating third-party applications with Ariba products.
For more information, visit www.ariba.com (new window).