Although MQSeries Integrator version 2.0 was introduced in a limited beta in December 1999 and won't be generally available until mid-2000, voters were impressed enough with the previous version that momentum carried IBM Corp.'s product to a conclusive victory in the enterprise application integration (EAI)/middleware category of Datamation's Product of the Year for 1999 survey.

MQSeries Integrator 2.0 swept the category of EAI/middleware products released in 1999, garnering 98 out of 236 votes cast, or 41.5%. It received more than twice the number of votes of second-place finisher Vitria BusinessWare 4.0 from Vitria Technology Inc., in Sunnyvale, Calif., which generated 36 votes, or 15.3%. Third place went to Mercator 2.1 from Mercator Software Inc., formerly TSI Software International Ltd., of Wilton, Conn., with 13.6%, or 32 votes. Rounding out the category were TIB/Rendezvous 5.3 from Tibco Software Inc. and MQSecure from Candle Corp., with 9.7% (23 votes) and 7.6% (18 votes) respectively.

A complete package

MQSeries Integrator 2.0 contains some of the major advances in this crop of middleware products. Chief among these are support for eXtensible Markup Language (XML) messaging and the addition of sophisticated process management components. "More than anything else, users want the ability to create integration more quickly and easily than ever before, and XML addresses that issue," says Daniel Sholler, senior program director in the Application Delivery Strategy Service at META Group Inc., in Stamford, Conn.

Enterprise application integration / middleware category Datamation readers had the following nominees to choose from: Product Vendor MQSecure Candle Corp. MQSeries Integrator IBM Corp. Mercator Mercator Software Inc. (formerly TSI Software International Ltd.) TIB/Rendezvous Tibco Software Inc. Vitria BusinessWare Vitria Technology Inc.

"XML provides a reasonably standard means of defining, and the work around the XML schema standard will create an easily implemented representation of these syntax formats," he says. "Putting all of this together means vendors will be more easily able to leverage both data and metadata from a variety of sources, simplifying the process of creating integration."

Much of MQSeries Integrator's success has been driven by the success of the MQSeries messaging platform, IBM's status as a major vendor, and the product's reputation as a workhorse in the EAI world, Sholler says.

But 2.0 will provide advances. One of the most heavily anticipated new features for Canadian Depository for Securities Ltd. is MQSeries Integrator's reported "one-to-many" and "many-to-one" routing. That would be a big advance over version 1.1, which is what the company is currently using, notes John Packwood, director of business development at the Toronto-based provider of clearing and settlement services for all stock exchange trades and Government of Canada money markets and debt.

"Being able to route the same message to multiple destinations will enable us to send the same data to multiple clients," which will be required for a new initiative combining the company's stock and fixed-income systems, Packwood says. MQSeries Integrator will be a part of that project, as well as a project that enables the company to transform and route various message types into the company's proprietary systems, he notes.

Accolades are no surprise

Vitria's BusinessWare has been a leader in the process management arena for some time, so its impressive showing as the number two middleware product is no surprise, Sholler says. BusinessWare 4.0 brings it all together, combining the product's superior process control with a new application adapter and monitoring capability, a unique combination of services that enables the automation of meaningful interactions between applications and facilitates complex business process automation, Sholler says.

EAI products/services market will head north META Group Inc.

Northpoint Communications, a San Francisco-based provider of digital subscriber line (DSL) services in the wholesale channel, uses Vitria BusinessWare 4.0 to connect the company's many business systems. "Instead of writing direct connects between these systems, we chose to funnel everything through the Vitria middleware," explains CIO Mike Parks. "It gives us maximum flexibility in bringing these systems on board and adding new features and functionality, as well as adding new systems downstream."

But Parks believes the product's powerful BusinessWare logic is the most important feature of all. "I can take a lot of flow-through logic out of a silo system and put it in this middleware. It gives me complete flexibility on what I connect to and what I share with the systems I connect with," he says.

Third-place Mercator 2.1 wins accolades from users for several features. Craig Coit, senior vice president of financial systems for Bank One Corp. in Chicago, is in the process of upgrading to version 2.1. He anticipates many benefits from upgrading, including the ability to process extended binary coded decimal interchange code (EBCDIC) and packed decimal code without the requirement to make a preliminary conversion pass. "It saved not only development time, but has also reduced our ongoing runtime significantly because of our large file sizes," he notes.

What to look for in 2000

META Group's Sholler expects EAI/middleware software to evolve greatly over the coming year. "We're very early on in the maturity of e-business integration, and there will be a lot of changes in the technology foundation before it becomes ubiquitous," he says.

Further developments in XML will be foremost on middleware vendors' minds, because XML can go a long way toward simplifying the manner in which information is transferred from EAI systems to associated applications. Moreover, more sophisticated XML persistence mechanisms will streamline the processing of complex interactions, Sholler says. //

Karen D. Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in business and technology. Based in the Washington, D.C. area, she can be reached at karen.schwartz@bigfoot.com.