IBM announced WebSphere Business Integration Modeler and Business Integration Monitor that simplify the design, development and deployment of business processes in Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.3. The company also updated its Business Integration Server.

Business Integration Modeler and Monitor are based on technologies acquired by IBM during the last two years, through its CrossWorlds Software Inc and Holografix Inc deals. Doug Brown, director of WebSphere Business Integration marketing, said IBM is retiring the CrossWorlds and Holografix names.

The announcements come as IBM’s number-one J2EE application server and business integration rival BEA announced the latest version of its integration software and development tools. San Jose, California-based BEA this week announced WebLogic Platform 8.1 and posted a beta online, at the opening of its annual eWorld developer conference in Orlando, Florida.

BEA founder, chairman and chief executive Alfred Chuang last week claimed this latest round of products would give his company a two-year lead over IBM. BEA has integrated its visual-input-based Workshop development environment, originally used with the J2EE WebLogic application sever, with the company’s business integration software simplifying development and integration.

Brown dismissed Chuang’s claim of technology leadership, but conceded BEA poses a serious challenge to IBM. Brown told ComputerWire: They are the number-one competitor in that [integration] space. They enjoy momentum.

Business Integration Modeller and Monitor allow developers to generate executables without Java programming through a set of graphical tools, based on CrossWorld’s process templates. Modeler, Monitor and Server are based on the IBM-backed Eclipse framework and allow flows to be built using Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS), a potential web services specification co-authored with Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp and BEA.

Brown added Business Integration Server 4.2 would this year adopt WebSphere’s Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for its runtime. Brown said a single runtime environment means customers face just a single set of capacity planning and configuration issues while developers would use just a single set of programming tools.

Source: Computerwire