Abbey to build on WebSphere

Abbey National has selected IBM's WebSphere application server platform over rival platforms from BEA and Oracle. But the company claims that it has a pragmatic view when it comes to software platforms.

The banking group announced this week that IBM will replace iPlanet, its main strategic partner for internet infrastructure for the last two years.

Bill Gibbons, director of group technology services, explained that Abbey National decided to go with IBM because it was looking for an integrated solution.

"We are trying to make sure we minimise any integration issues across the organisation. There are wonderful best-of-breed solutions out there but we took the view that an integrated solution of development tools and wide range of web services was better for our requirements," he said.

Although the company will rely mostly on WebSphere, it will continue to use integration tools from BEA. "BEA Tuxedo remains the core of our integration infrastructure. We are using a product from IBM partner Prolifics called XMLink to link into Tuxedo, so we are not moving away from it," said Gibbons.

Abbey National claims that WebSphere is integral to its plans to reach customers through an increasing number of channels, including Digital TV and Wap. "If in future the customer wants that breadth of channel delivery, we want to be able to meet that," explained Gibbons.

As well as WebSphere Abbey National is also looking at voice server personalisation. Gibbons maintained that, although the company appears to be standardising its internet platforms around Java, it is also monitoring Microsoft's C# development language and its .Net web services platform.

"I don't think it is a case of Java versus C# versus .Net. They are all at different levels of maturity," he said. "I am very much a pragmatist, and believe that you should make use of what's available and stable."