IBM EPP - Competition to EPB ?

IBM released its Enterprise Payments Platform in December 2006. To review the IBM press release you can click on this link: IBM EPP Press Release.

Is this EPP a close competitor to the EPB ? I believe it very much is. It is an IBM product suite that enables financial institutions to rapidly develop and deploy payment applications across a WebSphere infrastructure. The backbone of the EPB is an ISO20022 XML message that allows for easy transformation and routing. Orchestration, Transaction Status Updates and Monitoring are key components of both Microsoft's EPP and the Open Source EPB project.
One key differentiator is that the EPB will be available as an Open Source Initiative.

During the current design phase I encourage all payment professionals to provide their input in the definition of a complete Payment Work Flow with all its interactions towards other auxiliary and Payment systems.
In the next couple of Blog Post, I will share with you my current definition of a Payment Work Flow defined in WS-BPEL XML and encourage everybody to comment on this project.