IBM Corp has established its new e-business design center in Poughkeepsie, New York with 29 staff that have access to the full gamut of Big Blue technology resources. IBM hopes it can tempt customers to build new e-business and e-commerce systems on top of their existing S/390 mainframes by architecting, designing and prototyping new environments at the center. The center reports to S/390 boss Dave Carlucci.
Director Paul Fried, who says the center is geared towards electronic transaction processing, says it will have three customers on its books by September and can handle three concurrent engagements which it expects to be able to complete in six to eight weeks.
Although geared towards keeping S/390 users on their Big Blue boxes as they migrate to e-business systems, the center says it will support other IBM systems, as well as third-party hardware and software where required. Its main software focus, like the rest of IBM at the moment, is middleware, CRM, business intelligence and other front-end applications. The development of online buying, banking, inventory and security systems is likely to be its bread and butter. รก
