About WebSphere

IBM WebSphere is the leading software platform for e-business. It includes more than 150 Internet infrastructure software or middleware products designed to help businesses become on demand e-businesses. The WebSphere product family features broad support for open standards. Its products include application servers, messaging software, business integration tools, portal creation tools, and integrated development environments for creating Web-based business applications.

The WebSphere platform can help you to:

The WebSphere product family

The WebSphere family of products falls into the following categories, providing a complete middleware infrastructure for dynamic e-business:

Figure 2. The three categories of software that comprise the WebSphere software platform.
The three categories of software that comprise the WebSphere software platform.

The WebSphere platform consists of middleware software for three major e-business needs: portals, integration, and foundation and tools.

As shown in Figure 3, the WebSphere platform provides:

WebSphere Business Integration

WebSphere Business Integration, one of the three types of WebSphere solutions and products, allows businesses to connect their applications and exchange information quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively, with minimal human intervention. Business Integration enables companies to realize the benefits of end-to-end integration through five core capabilities:

Partner Gateway helps fulfill the Connect capability. Not only does it allow you to communicate with the members of your trading community, it extends the business integration within your enterprise to trading partners and customers.

Figure 3 shows Partner Gateway's place in WebSphere's Business Integration product line.

Figure 3. Partner Gateway's role in WebSphere Business Integration's product line.
Partner Gateway's role in WebSphere Business Integration's product line.

WebSphere Partner Gateway is layered with other WebSphere products to build comprehensive, flexible business integration solutions. Partner Gateway's role is to enable enterprises and their trading partners to exchange business documents. Through the use of back-end systems such as WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker or WebSphere InterChange Server, business information contained in the exchanged documents is easily integrated with the business-critical applications on which companies depend.

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