IBM Senior Vice President and Software Group General Manager Steve Mills met with three of his top lieutenants in his office back in 1997 to discuss the "Webification" of IBM's enterprise tools. Out of that discussion <A HREF="http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/IBM-WebSphere-at-10/?kc=EWKNLEAU062408STR3">the IBM WebSphere Application Server was born.</A>

In an interview at IBM headquarters, Mills told eWEEK how he and Danny Sabbah, John Swainson and Alfred Spector met in Mills' office in Somers, N.Y., to discuss IBM's future in the nascent application server space when the market competition was growing hot and heavy. Only Sabbah remains at IBM of the three lieutenants. Sabbah, who was Mills' CTO at the time, is now general manager of IBM's Rational business unit. Swainson is CEO of CA, and Spector is vice president of research and special initiatives at Google.