If you heard what IBM's Steve Mills had to say, you might think that Big Blue is against the idea of out-of-the-box enterprise solutions. Mills, IBM Software Division Senior Vice President, spoke to ZDNet News earlier this year: "Oracle tells us all the time that it would be great if people adapted automatically to their world. That's not possible -- that's naive."

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

The criticism was hardly deserved for two reasons. First, as I reported in a previous column, it's not as if turnkey COTS is the only thing Oracle has to offer. If you want to go high-end with heavy customization and inter-application integration, Oracle will be happy to take you there. Second: To the same degree that Oracle has offerings for those who prefer to customize, IBM believe, it or not, is a strong proponent of COTS.

As it turns out, IBM has built an entire strategy based on principles that are virtually identical to those espoused by Ellison. After stumbling upon a recent press release jointly issued by J.D. Edwards and IBM, I wanted to know what was meant by the phrase "includes support for Linux, Java, and HTML."

That's when I bumped into to David Bruce, IBM's Global Mid Market Segment Manager for eServer iSeries. Describing the benefits of IBM's eServer for J.D. Edwards, Bruce says, "we need more people out there thinking about the war on complexity. Total cost of ownership is the lifeblood for IBM's iSeries servers [formerly known as the AS/400 line]." Suggesting perhaps that IBM was there first, Bruce goes on to say, "this is a war we have been fighting for a long time. The more the merrier."

Exemplifying IBM's approach is the subject of the press release: a co-branded offering from IBM and J.D. Edwards that targets mid-range manufacturing and distribution companies that need an ERP and supply-chain solution, but don't want the headaches of running it or customizing it.

"Smaller enterprise customers have the same requirements [as larger customers], but don't have the same cash flow and support. In the larger space, customers need a more customized solution. Smaller customers like the idea of running [a] business instead of running [a] computer," says Bruce. "It is more than just a pulling it out of the box and plugging it in. [You can] package it and make it easy to plug in; but [if] the first time that something goes wrong, you need a whole staff of IT personnel, you really haven't accomplished the objective of simplicity."

Like Oracle's eBusiness suite, IBM's eServer for J.D. Edwards, is designed for customers who are more than ready to use COTS that's highly configurable. They're also prepared to rethink their business processes around the software's capability, instead of the other way around. As it turns out, IBM and Oracle may be more alike than they are different.

Indeed, about the only difference between the two companies' approaches, one that Oracle emphasizes and IBM spokesperson Tim Dallman confirms, is that IBM invariably needs a third party like J.D. Edwards to complete the solution. In this case, J.D. Edwards contributes an application called OneWorld, while IBM provides the underlying infrastructure: an easy-to-run system (the iSeries server), an enterprise-tested J2EE platform (Websphere), and a world-class relational database (DB/2).

Oh, and what did IBM mean about Linux support? Recall that the press release said "supports Linux, Java, and HTML." IBM threw in that little statement for good measure. While IBM's WebSphere supports Java and HTML (it's one of the many J2EE application servers), Linux has nothing to do with the J.D. Edwards partnership. But, thanks to distributions from SuSE and TurboLinux, the iSeries servers, which can cost you anywhere from $12,000 to $6 million, depending on how much disk and memory you need, can run Linux natively.

What do you think? Share your thoughts with your fellow readers at ZDNet TechUpdate's Talkback, or write directly to david.berlind@cnet.com.

Got a great tip? An industry rumor? Or do you want to submit your own column to ZDNet TechUpdate? Send David your submission, and if we use it, you'll be compensated with some of the cool vendor schwag that arrives in our mailboxes on a daily basis.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

[an error occurred while processing this directive]