IBM Positioned in Magic Quadrant for Product Information Management Software

IBM today announced that Gartner, Inc. haspositioned IBM in the visionary quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for ProductInformation Management, 2005.*

According to Gartner, this market is attracting end-user organizations thatare trying to achieve a single view of product data. Gartner expects to seestrong growth across a wide range of industries, including retail, consumergoods, industrial, automotive, life sciences and distribution/wholesale. By2009, the product information management market is expected to reachrevenue of more than $500 million.

IBM's product information management middleware, IBM WebSphere ProductCenter, helps companies develop, manage and share a central, accurate andcomprehensive repository of product information, making it available ondemand through a flexible service oriented architecture. For example, aconsumer electronics company would use WebSphere Product Center to managethousands of attributes for its complete set of products and categories andshare them with their distributors, dealers and retailers.

The world's largest global companies are using WebSphere Product Center toturn disparate silos of product information into strategic business assets,powering enterprise-wide sales, marketing and supply chain initiativesincluding new product introduction, ecommerce, global data synchronizationand RFID. IBM WebSphere Product Center's extensive customer base includescompanies in retail, consumer products, electronics, automotive, industrialmanufacturing, healthcare and distribution industries.

"Product information management is at the forefront of strategic planningas companies realize the necessity of having a single source for allproduct information that is complete, accurate, consistent and scalable,"said Paraic Sweeney, vice president, Product Information ManagementSolutions, IBM. "With WebSphere Product Center, our customers can automateotherwise manual business processes, reduce bottlenecks and ease theprocess of introducing new products to market. This also complements themigration to a services oriented architecture, providing an accurate sourceof master information for business processes."

WebSphere Product Center is one of IBM's master data management systemsthat help companies deal with the challenge of maintaining a single view ofinformation about their products, customers, suppliers and employees. IBMrecently announced its latest version of WebSphere Product Center to enablecompanies to seamlessly manage product information using enterprise portalssuch as IBM WebSphere Portal and provides enhanced functionality forsynchronizing large volume of product and trading partner information viathe global data synchronization network.

Beginning in March a webcast featuring Andrew White of Gartner discussingthe Product Information Management Magic Quadrant and the future of themarketplace will be available at www.gartner.com.

About Gartner Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2005 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused withpermission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of amarketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner'sanalysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for thatmarketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor,product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advisetechnology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders"quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and isnot meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims allwarranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, includingany warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About IBM

The desire by businesses to access, manage and deliver information moreefficiently is driving rapid change in the IT marketplace. Companies thatare grappling with new government mandates and business demands arestriving to capture and integrate information in a more seamless, real-timefashion across the enterprise. IBM's information on demand approachcombines deep business insight with open standards, advanced storagesystems, and sophisticated software to manage and secure information as aservice to create efficient, cost effective and flexible informationinfrastructures. Regardless of industry, IBM helps companies transform datainto insight to enable information on demand. Please visithttp://www.ibm.com for more information.

IBM, IBM WebSphere and the IBM e-business logo are trademarks or registeredtrademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. For a list ofadditional IBM trademarks, please see www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

* Magic Quadrant for Product Information Management, 2005, December 30,2005. Andrew White.

CONTACT:Holli Haswell512-286-3265hhaswell@us.ibm.com

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