IBM with its Jazz research project is looking to fine-tune collaboration capabilities in its Rational software products.
The company discussed Jazz at the IBM Rational Software Development Conference 2006 event in Orlando, Fla., this week.
With Jazz, users of Rational products would be provided automatically with software development artifacts pertinent to the project they are working on, said Roger Oberg, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM Rational. Rather than doing this manually, artifacts would be furnished to the desktop in an automated fashion.
Also included in the Jazz project is real-time communications via instant messaging. Jazz technology, however, is not expected to be included in IBM products for at least a year.
IBM is seeking contributions to Jazz from the community at large. Some parts of Jazz are expected to be made available via an open source format.
IBM this fall, meanwhile, plans to release versions of several products that will feature a greater componentization capability.
"One of the key aspects of this release is we're going to component-ize the products so that customers can configure their desktops more flexibly," Oberg said. The move benefits packaging and installation, allowing users to download the specific software they need rather than downloading an entire platform. For example, if a user just wants a Unified Modeling Language (UML) component but not the code analysis plugin, the user can just download the UML offering, said Oberg.
Products to be upgraded include Rational Application Developer, Rational Software Architect, Rational Software Modeler, Rational Functional Tester and Rational Performance Tester.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 8, 2006 04:52 PM
