IBM Rational Debuts New Programs, Communities

Looking to further extend software integration well beyond
the computer and into all aspects of life—from cars and medicine, to
manufacturing and communications—IBM Rational
on Monday unveiled new programs and tools designed to further leverage efforts
by business partners and higher educational institutions into both embedded
computing and agile software development.

Speaking during Innovate
2011 in Orlando, a steady stream of Rational executives, partners, and
blue-ribbon customers such as General
Motors and Danske Bank discussed the economic benefits of agile
development, the wide-ranging future of the software industry, and the value of
reuse for boosting time-to-market and improving competitive advantage.

IBM Rational’s
new software is built on Jazz, an open software development platform, designed
to allow developers to quickly work together, across geographies and teams,
said Gina Poole, vice president of marketing at IBM
Rational.

The company’s new Collaboration Design Management
incorporates one centralized hub for storage and reference of designs. This
enables design teams to reference past designs for future reuse and compliance,
Poole said. By giving developers centralized access to
this data, software development teams can dramatically reduce costs and time
associated with future iterations, she said. In addition, developers can use
Collaboration Design Management to analyze the results of past actions, using
this information to determine the results new design changes could have on
their organization, said Poole.

In fact, a costly 40 percent of software development
consists of scrapping and reworking, said Walker Royce, vice president and
Chief Software Economist, at Rational, in Monday’s keynote session.

“A 10 percent reduction in complexity is more valuable than
a 10 percent improvement in agility,” said Royce.

To further its agile-development initiatives, Rational
unveiled its Collaborative Development and Operations solution, which features
integration between many IBM software
offerings. The solution, developed in conjunction with Tivoli,
integrates the worlds of development and operations which often run separately
yet concurrently—but which should, optimally, be unified for the organization’s
ultimate financial health and competitive benefit.

After all, two-thirds of global organizations manage
software development teams that work in multiple locations, according to the IBM
CEO Study, which surveyed more than 1,500
CEOs from 60 countries and 33 industries.

“Additionally, the study found there is a growing
unpredictability in getting software through development and into its full
application within an organization. More than 62 percent of development
projects fail to meet the intended schedule and 30 percent of project costs are
due to rework and poor execution of requirements,” the report said.

To help partners address specific vertical markets, the
developer enhanced its Systems and Software Engineering solution in an
initiative designed to accelerate adoption of integrated, collaborative processes,
and to unify the systems lifecycle with built-in industry best practice support
based on specific markets’ best practices, said Kristof Kloeckner, general manager at IBM Rational.

Recognizing that
organizations use not only IBM
technologies, Rational now provides new support for SAP, allowing partners to enable customers to
manage both SAP and non-SAP projects in a unified, time-saving and
cost-effective manner, he said.

In order to empower partners, customers and developers to
share ideas, best practices and questions, Rational forged a new community on
developerWorks, said Poole, who was responsible for
overseeing developerWorks’ growth to an 8-million member community before her
move to Rational.

“It really takes design from being an isolated part of the
design lifecycle,” she said. “When something changes later down in the
lifecycle, that collaboration can happen.”

To support the next generation of Rational developers, the
company debuted JazzHub beta, an educational online forum for universities.
Within minutes, higher educational institutions can initiate Jazz-based
projects and run them, said Poole.

“We believe this is just the beginning of a cooperative
effort to drive education in software and systems life cycle management, and we
are committed to growing and evolving the JazzHub in the education community,”
she said.

Those organizations already embracing agile development are
reaping the rewards, Innovation 2011 attendees said.

“The Volt has the more complex software set that GM has ever
put into production—yet it was developed on time, with quality,” said Bill
Bolander, GM Technical Fellow – Controls Process Engineering at GM, product
development, in the keynote. 

Using Rational software, GM has seen an 80 percent reduction
in post-deployment costs over the past 10 years, he said.