IBM’s Ilog acquisition means better supply chain visualisation

Ilog becomes part of the IBM WebSphere and IBM says it is guaranteeing clients’ and partners’ investments in existing IBM and Ilog technologies, allowing customers to take advantage of the now broader set of capabilities without replacing existing systems. “The acquisition of Ilog is an important element within our overall SOA [service orientated architecture] strategy and the key addition of the Ilog Business Rule Management System to IBM’s BPM [business process management] portfolio will help IBM clients to become more dynamic,” says Tom Rosamilia, general manager, IBM WebSphere Software. “Ilog brings significant new capabilities to IBM that will provide agile, flexible applications for real-time response and confident decision-making,” he adds. Rosamilia also makes the point that clients who use IBM Websphere role-based business spaces (customised user experiences that enable users to access contextualised process information in a secure role-based environment) will now be able to harness Ilog’s visualisation capabilities. “In addition to diagramming and charting, these visualisations can be used by business space to provide more robust web-based BPM capabilities, such as process modelling,” he says.