Rational Move: IBM Debuts Development, Cloud Computing Tools

The new offerings, unveiled Monday at the 2009 Rational Software Conference in Orlando, Fla., go beyond tools aimed specifically at developers to focus on the broader issue of helping organizations manage their software investments.

"Most companies don't manage software as a strategic asset," said Scott Hebner, marketing vice president at IBM's Rational Software business unit. "The more effective you are in building a competency in software, the more successful you are going to be as a business."

The new IBM Rational Insight toolset is a project management system built on IBM's Cognos business intelligence software and Jazz collaborative development platform, Hebner said in a pre-conference interview. The system provides a company's executives with visibility into development projects, using dashboards and metrics to track project performance and avoid cross-organizational issues that delay projects or even cause them to fail. That product is available today.

Fifty-nine percent of development projects either fail completely or don't meet cost, time or scope objectives, according to a study conducted by IBM Global Services. To that end IBM showed a beta version of the new Rational Focal Point for Project Management, also built on Jazz, that is specifically designed to help development project leaders manage the resources involved in a project, even when those resources are spread across geographical and organizational boundaries. That product is slated for availability by the end of 2009.

The new Measured Capability Improvement Framework (MCIF) is a collection of products, services and methodologies that help organizations improve their software development and delivery processes based on their past experiences. The components of the MCIF are also generally available today.

And at the conference IBM is demonstrating the IBM Rational Software Delivery Services for the Cloud, a new set of services for designing, testing and deploying software assets for cloud computing, Hebner said. IBM said formal "technology previews" of the toolset are planned for late June.

IBM Rational has some 1,500 business partners, including resellers, ISVs and systems integrators, that work with Rational software, Hebner said.

Monday IBM also announced the winners of the 2009 IBM Rational Business Partner Awards. They include: Ravenflow for outstanding solution by an ISV; Accenture for outstanding collaborative application life-cycle management solution by a systems integrator; Sogeti for outstanding quality management solution by a systems integrator; Prolifics for outstanding solution by a value-added reseller/regional systems integrator; RocketGang for outstanding system-focused solution; and Ascendant Technology for top marketing and sales Rational business partner.