IBM has announced 20 software development and distribution
products that help companies collaborate with partners, suppliers,
customers and their employees.
The new offerings use IBM's Jazz collaborative technology to
help geographically distributed software teams work together in an
open, real-time and transparent manner, to more effectively deliver
and source software.
Technologies using Jazz can interoperate with software from
other suppliers, allowing customers to significantly improve their
ability to communicate data within their enterprise and with other
enterprises.
"Currently, organisational, geographical and technical silos
inhibit business agility and return on software investments. In a
globally integrated enterprise, organisations need to transform how
they collaborate to get the job done," said Daniel Sabbah, general
manager at
IBM Rational Software.
"IBM's Jazz platform breaks down location, infrastructure and
organisational barriers, transforming the practice of global
software delivery," he said.
By the end of 2008, IBM and its business partners expect to
release 20 products using the collaborative capabilities of
Jazz.
The new IBM software will help development teams of all sizes
improve productivity and manage project requirements in
real-time.
Available at the end of this month will be IBM Rational Team
Concert, which incorporates social networking technologies, such as
instant messaging and presence awareness, into the management of a
software delivery project on a global scale.
IBM is also introducing IBM Rational Requirements Composer to
help software delivery teams gain consensus on how a project should
be designed using familiar business artifacts such as storyboards,
sketches, scenarios and models.
Currently in beta, this new software will help teams visualise
commitments, thereby reducing rework and review cycles on
requirements, said IBM.
IBM has also announced the beta of IBM Rational Quality Manager,
comprehensive test planning and process software which provides a
single view into all aspects of a quality plan.