IBM Business Partners Improve Quality and Efficiency of Software and Systems Delivery

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the integration of IBM Business Partner offerings with the new Rational Software Delivery Platform 7.0 desktop products. The software solutions, validated through the Ready for IBM Rational software offering, help customers accelerate SOA adoption and take advantage of sound architectural design to deliver software and services with greater efficiency and quality.


The IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform 7.0 desktop products is a comprehensive set of Eclipse-based offerings and best-practices processes that help customers govern the process of software and systems delivery and tighten the relationship between IT and line of business. Many IBM Business Partners have validated that their products meet IBM's requirements for interoperability and user experience through the Ready for IBM Rational software offering.
These partners are also eligible for the IBM SOA Specialty. The IBM SOA Specialty is a selective program providing technical enablement, skill-building roadmaps, and sales and marketing support for those IBM Business Partners who successfully complete IBM's rigorous SOA technical and business requirements.
In support of IBM's software delivery strategy, the following IBM Business Partners have validated their offerings on the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform:


Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

• Exaltec extends the power of the Rational Software Delivery Platform (SDP) with legacy modernization solutions that help customers realize the cost benefits of new architectures, like SOA, while removing dependencies on legacy RPG, Visual Basic and Oracle Forms programs.

Governance

• Black Duck Software's protexIP enables developers, legal counsel, and business decision-makers to manage and control the open source and 3rd party software components in use, ensuring that components are properly licensed and enabling effective intellectual property (IP) governance. The integrated offering allows users to evaluate their use of these components from within Rational Application Developer and Rational Software Architect and to make an initial assessment of the compliance with company IP policy.


• Ounce Labs' flagship product, Ounce 4, integrates with Rational Application Developer 7.0, providing vulnerability analysis and remediation advice on the developer desktop.


• SPI Dynamics DevInspect™ combines blackbox testing and source code analysis to automatically find and fix security defects, helping Rational Software Delivery Platform developers meet governance targets to build secure Web applications quickly and easily without impacting schedules or requiring security expertise.

Quality Management

• BSD Group's Oracle Applications Extension for Rational Performance Tester broadens Rational's quality management support for packaged application support by extending Rational Performance Tester to provide Oracle application support.

Simplifying Systems Development

• EmbeddedPlus SysML and Simulation Toolkits are add-ins to Rational Systems Developer, Rational Software Modeler and Rational Software Architect that support modeling of systems using the OMG SysML standard and simulation/execution of UML 2 and SysML models. EmbeddedPlus DOORKeeper allows linking between Telelogic DOORS® requirements and UML/SysML model elements, Java and C++ code in Rational Software Modeler, Software Architect, and Systems Developer.


• Galorath SEER-SEM's integration to the Rational SDP enables project estimates using the SEER method to be developed from use case data in Rational Systems Developer and Software Modeler.


• Klocwork K7 is proven static analysis technology for C, C++ and Java, integrated with Rational Software Delivery Platform, allowing software development organizations to reduce their costs and improve their software quality.

Simplifying Solutions

• Agitar's AgitarOne 4.0 is the latest generation of unit-testing technology for Java, broadening the Rational Software Delivery Platform developer's capabilities to produce good code that is easy to maintain, though automated JUnit generation and interactive exploratory testing.


• Business Objects Crystal Reports for Eclipse, a 100 percent Java-based version of the defacto standard for report design and deployment, is directly embedded in IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform 7.0, providing developers with easy access to a powerful, simple, flexible reporting solution that enables them to efficiently create reports directly within their applications. In addition, the new Crystal Reports features in Rational Application Developer and Rational Software Architects provide advanced management capabilities for enterprise report server administration.


• Gorilla Logic - The Gorilla eXecution Engine minimizes development rework by letting business stakeholders validate requirements by test driving a high-fidelity application simulation generated directly from UML models in Rational Software Architect or Software Modeler before a single line of code has been written.

Other partner products validated for the Rational Software Delivery Platform 7.0 desktop products include Pathfinder Solutions Pathmate, Catalyst Systems OpenMake, Reischmann Informatik Toolbus, and Secure Software CodeAssure.
"As businesses transform, it is critical for all aspects of the business to be well-governed from business strategy through requirements, application development, testing and deployment," said Michael Loria, vice president business development, IBM Rational Software. "When IBM Business Partners validate their offerings on the Rational Software Delivery Platform, our customers are assured their software and systems are an integrated part of the full end-to-end business processes of software development and delivery."
The Ready for IBM Rational software validation offering is easy to access with remote, web-based validation. IBM has made it even easier for ISVs to participate by offering streamlined requirements along with further technical enablement support, including sample plug-ins and validation documentation, FAQs, articles and access to the Rational ISV enablement team. Validated products bear the Ready for IBM Rational software mark as an assurance to customers of their compliance.

Business partners are increasingly turning to IBM to help customers win in the marketplace. With more than 65 validated solutions to date, the Ready for IBM Rational software program provides IBM Business Partners with a broad range of complementary capabilities to extend the reach of the Rational Software Delivery Platform. In the past two years, Rational has recruited and developed more than 150 new value-added resellers worldwide into the IBM Value Advantage Plus (VAP) resell program increasing the value-added partner community to more than 250. The entire Rational portfolio is available in IBM Software Group's Passport Advantage offering, and Rational makes training and enablement events available to IBM Business Partners at no charge.