Japanese subsidiaries of vendors like IBM, Sun Microsystems, Unisys, Oracle, and BEA have also joined the group. Manufacturing Looking at the vertical manufacturers, Boeing is an example par excellence for a company with a large IT garage, chock full of systems built and deployed in the last thirty years. When selecting the new components Boeing wanted to use, the main focus was on functionality, and not so much on integration. This was essential in integrating the existing legacy systems and the new COTS components, since each of these systems were implemented differently. Boeing has successfully implemented the first phase, initially focusing on Product Data Management for the new Boeing 777 wide-body planes.
Development is ongoing, adding functionality and new components in staged phases.
Components that will be parked in Boeing's new IT garage include products from Baan, Metaphase, Trilogy, and Cimlink. They want to reduce dependency on highly skilled developers by using proven IT languages and tools. In Japan, telecom companies seem to be following the trend. NEC has a long tradition of providing such systems to telecom companies in Japan and overseas. You can see that a lot of different groups and companies are involved, so well-defined interfaces and interoperability are really essential for us, especially in a distributed environment.