Reinforcing the company’s strategy around open source business models, IBM announced new resources designed to help software development teams build Eclipse-based, vendor neutral development environments.
Additionally, IBM is unveiling a new customer support program — IBM Rational Elite Support for Eclipse — that will provide hands-on technical assistance to the more than 2.3 million users of Eclipse worldwide. Available in the fourth quarter of 2006, IBM’s Eclipse customer service offering will be the first of its kind at the enterprise level.
“IBM is responding to the growing needs of customers and the open source development community, by addressing the requirement for commercial vendors to complement the current open source community model,” said Ovum Senior Analyst Bola Rotibi.
Expanding Focus on Development Tools
With Thursday’s announcements, IBM is nurturing the next phase of Eclipse adoption by expanding its focus on development tools to include standards-based, cross platform business applications for desktops and servers. Among the open source Eclipse Callisto resources IBM is releasing are the following:
- New Eclipse Callisto-based software development tools. These will help clients quickly design, develop and test applications. IBM Lotus Designer is a rapid application development tool that helps clients quickly build new components that run in WebSphere Portal 6.0, delivering a vision of “situational application” development to this environment. IBM plans to release a no-charge public downloadable beta in late-September fromdeveloperWorks.
By mid-October, IBM will open up IBM Rational Software Architect and IBM Rational Functional Tester version 7 for beta testing. Clients participating in the beta program can experiment with new features that help implement service oriented architectures, systems development, andgeographically distributed applications.
- New Eclipse Callisto resources such as developerWorks, the skills-building hub of IBM’s developer community which has nearly 5.5 million registered users. The new resources will offer a wide range of free Eclipse-focused tools to help developers build and maintain their Eclipse skill-set.
developerWorks recently unveiled a new educational tool designed to help Eclipse users learn about V3.2 enhancements. The “Building Cheat Sheets in Eclipse V3.2” tutorial will allow developers to view interactive tutorials from within the Eclipse Workbench and learn how to perform complex Eclipse tasks.
The Power of Flexibility
“With this announcement, IBM continues to help clients enhance the value of their investments in open source by delivering enterprise class tooling based on the latest distributions of Eclipse, and by providing the first enterprise class support offering for organizations heavily invested in Eclipse,” said Danny Sabbah, general manager, Rational Software, IBM Software Group.
“These new offerings will further empower developers to have the flexibility they desire while also helping our clients better govern their software development investments within a broader organizational context.”
Loading ...
