IBM Opens Jazz.net Community To All

IBM announced today it is opening up the community Web page for its application lifecycle management (ALM) platform, Jazz. The community, Jazz.net, had previously been open only to IBM customers, academics and partners.

Vice president of marketing and strategy Scott Hebner says Jazz is modeled on the company's Eclipse community, though this time geared for a team rather than an individual developer. "Think of Jazz as being the next step," he said. "This time it's much more about the server side of things, the overall managing of the lifecycle of the project."

The rollout of Jazz as an open source ALM will take some time, Hebner admits. "We're increasing amounts of [open source elements], but we've got to take it one step at a time," he says. "Step one is opening it up to that community." In order for business partners to support Jazz, Hebners says he feels an open source approach is best. "The trick is how do you move down the path of making the key underpinnings open source?"

Hebner says the idea behind Jazz is to build future products in an open, transparent forum, where source codes will be introduced over time. "It helps spark innovation and creativity," he says of open communities. "The idea is to be a more effective integrator, in order to enhance the collaboration of a company's product team."

As for the future of open source, Heber says 2008 could serve as a tipping point. "It's a slow but sure movement toward a more open computing infrastructure," he says. "The whole idea is to connect everyone together, be it to communicate or integrate supply changes -- if it takes integrating multiple entities, it has to be based on open standards."

IBM also announced the second beta version of IBM Rational Team Concert Express, the company's first Jazz-based product. It is a toolset aimed at helping smaller development teams improve collaboration and productivity.

Hebner says it will also help promote the idea of a standard structure based on open source standards. "Every year that goes by that idea picks up weight," he says. "We see Team Concert Express also evolving the standard."

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