ATG Partners With IBM On CRM App

Art Technology Group Inc. has revealed a partnership to bundle its customer-facing software with IBM's WebSphere Application Server.

ATG produces customer self-service and customer-relationship management software that's being optimized to work with the standard version of WebSphere Application Server for Network Deployment. ATG's upcoming Commerce, Portal, and Relationship Management applications, versions 6.1, will have hooks into the WebSphere Application Server and related WebSphere software, says John Dragoon, senior VP of ATG product management.

"We will still support BEA Systems' WebLogic and our own application server, Dynamo," says Dragoon. "But it's our absolute intent to signal through this partnership that IBM is our infrastructure of choice."

In the past, ATG has supplied its own set of software modules for connecting to SAP AG and other enterprise resource planning systems, but Dragoon says ATG wanted to get out of the middleware business. By partnering with IBM, ATG can offer a software bundle that makes use of IBM's set of middleware connectors. The ATG applications support version 4.04 of WebSphere; the fall release will upgrade that support to WebSphere 5.0.

Bob Burke, ATG president, says that over the next 12 months the vendor will provide hooks between its applications and WebSphere Studio development tools and WebSphere MQ, IBM's messaging middleware.

ATG's customer-facing software is used by Acumen Sciences, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Pioneer Investments, and Roche Pharmaceutical. Customer-service applications that work with the WebSphere infrastructure are "a natural fit for us," says Gary Brown, chief information officer at the insurance firm Conseco Services LLC.

The ATG bundle is for the standard version of WebSphere, which adds $15,000 to ATG's regular package prices. It's not intended to work with IBM's Express version of WebSphere or the high-end enterprise version. WebSphere with ATG's Relationship Management and Portal applications will be priced at $95,000. WebSphere with ATG's Relationship Management and Commerce applications will be $110,000.

ATG isn't phasing out Dynamo, but Dynamo users may adopt the 6.1 version of ATG applications this fall at the normal upgrade price, getting WebSphere for free.

ATG Commerce is priced at $55,000; ATG Portal and Relationship Management are priced at $40,000 each. ATG is a publicly held software company with 465 employees. It had revenues of $101.5 million last year.