Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

After our last meeting with IBM, they pretty much said they would eventually being phasing out Commerce Manager/Trading Manager. Most of their presentation was for the product that would replace it. There are some concerns in my shop of whether eventually, TX may also be either replaced with another mapping/integration tool, or phase out completely.

Any ideas/thoughts?
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Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

WebSphere TX is too widely used (government, Fortune 500) to be phased out completely. I think it's pretty clear though that IBM's plan is to integrate the core mapping engine with other products (Process Server, Message Broker, Partner Gateway, DataPower). In my humble opinion the days of running WTX stand alone through Event Server/Launcher, Event Agent, perhaps even Command Server are limited. But organizations/people that can leverage WTX knowledge in the new environments will have a huge advantage.
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Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

jmenning has the plan pretty much right, although standalone use is not being phased out nor is command server.

The roadmap has been to expand the number of products
where WebSphere TX "extends" any existing transformation capabilities that might require
a) coding or scripting (eg XSLT)
b) where they can exploit the advantage of the prebuilt templates in the WTX Packs for Financial Services,Healthcare,Insurance and EDI commerce.
c) when there is a need to process more complex internal application data structures with the ease of using the drag and drop functions of the Map Designer.

WTX with Launcher has an established place in the market. It should be no surprise we are focused at the moment on new opportunities for the latest WebSphere TX for Integration Servers, which provides the core transformation engine as an extender to WebSphere Message Broker, ESB and Process Server solutions.

These products have been enhanced in the latest releases with specific WTX bindings and complex event driven functionality previously found only in the Launcher.


Eventually could mean a year, 2years or 5 years. We do not stand still, we continue to innovate, and hope you would want us to. There is no technical reason in theory why one or all of these other products extended with the WebSphere TX engine in the future could not drive the Trading Manager application.

There should be no concerns from a support and maintenance perspective for existing users given WTX with Launcher v8.2 announced in December 2007.
(Did you know we added RedHat & SUSE Linux on System z to the platform support ?) IBM SWG has just enhanced its minimum lifecycle policy from 3 years to 5years from first availability. Read about it here :http://www-306.ibm.com/software/websphere/support/lifecycle/

The 8.2 version of the Trading Manager application is due shortly, aligned with updates to the HIPAA EDI Pack for the latest 5010 format compliance, and other enhancements.

Rgds WW Marketing Manager - WebSphere Transformation Extender.
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Originally posted by: jvanboga

Pretty much spells the end of our use of the tool. Once Commerce Manager, Event Server etc... are discontinued, based on long term architectural plans, there's no future for the product here. (I'm sure Websphere is fine, never used it. My company made the decision years ago to go another route and based on what I'm seeing today....)

What I would see happening is continued use of the product without purchasing any maint plans for it. At that point we'd start reviewing options.

Message was edited by: jvanboga
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