It’s WebSphere… no it’s not…well…

Working in technical sales for a WebSphere support team, I get more and more calls from our customers and partners on products that seem to be WebSphere, but only bear the name.

The reason is simple, as we acquire new companies and products, we have to carefully decide, according to each brand’s mission, where a product might fit best. Is it about transactions and integration, WebSphere is the place. Is it about collaboration, then Lotus is the best bet. And so on for each software pillar.

But the thing is if you call IBM’s Techline, not everything is crystal. Some products use WebSphere in their name, but really belong to a different support team.

Here’s a list of WebSphere offerings and where they really belong:

DB2

• WebSphere Content Discovery Server
• WebSphere Data Integration Suite
• WebSphere DataStage (Ascential acquisition)

WebSphere Information Integration

• Advanced Edition
• Content Edition
• Event Publisher Edition
• Omnifind Edition
• Replication Edition
• Classic Event Publisher
• Classic Federation
• WebSphere ProfileStage (Ascential acquisition)
• WebSphere QualityStage (Ascential acquisition)
• WebSphere Customer Center
• WebSphere Product Center (Trigo Acquisition)

Lotus

• WebSphere Portal
• WebSphere Portlet Factory (Bowstreet acquisition)

So there you have it. Next time you call IBM for technical support, you’ll know that not everything belongs with the WebSphere team (althought I’d like that as it would secure my job further…)