Genuitec Ponders ALM Move

The maker of the MyEclipse IDE says it may enter the application lifecycle management space should customer demand dictate such a move.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Microsoft has said it plans to bring its high-volume, low-cost story to the application lifecycle management space, but if anybody can play that hand successfully in the Eclipse world, it just might be Genuitec.

"Our customers are going to push us in that direction," said Maher Masri, president of the Plano, Texas, company.

Genuitec, the maker of the MyEclipse IDE (integrated development environment), is a leader in the low-cost Java IDE market with its Eclipse-based tool set. MyEclipse, a full-blown application development environment that competes with the likes of JBuilder and JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA, sells for $30, with the professional version going for $50.

The Eclipse Foundation is moving into the application lifecycle management space. Click here to read more.

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The company has experienced more than 100 percent growth over the past year, and Masri said he has been satisfied with its position in the market as an IDE player. Yet, as the ALM space continues to heat up—there are two key Eclipse projects focusing on ALM—Masri said Genuitec is feeling pressure to participate.

However, Genuitec may not participate in the traditional sense of building a set of new ALM products to address the market.

"You might just see us pioneer services around ALM that developers can use," Masri told eWEEK at the EclipseCon 2006 conference here. "Theres a trail to be blazed."

Moreover, Masri said Genuitec had briefly considered getting involved in bidding for Borlands IDE business, particularly to get a hold of JBuilder to perhaps bolster the MyEclipse offering.

"We thought about that in multiple contexts," Masri said. However, "we realized most JBuilder customers are already thinking about an exit strategy, and we want to be that. So we can do better just as we are."

Click here to read about how Borland is focusing on ALM.

Meanwhile, Genuitec and Sun Microsystems announced a preview of the Matisse4MyEclipse GUI Builder plug-in. The Genuitec implementation of the NetBeans GUI Builder—previously code-named Project Matisse—enables the easy creation of Java Swing rich-client applications within the MyEclipse environment.

The MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench IDE extends the Eclipse platform to support UML (Unified Modeling Language), Web 2.0/AJAX (Asynchronous Java and XML), EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans)/Spring/Hibernate, database, and rich-client platform development for the full application life cycle.

"Weve had numerous requests to provide a Swing visual UI designer to facilitate Java rich-client development within MyEclipse," Masri said in a statement. "Since our user community kept referring to Matisse-like capabilities, we decided they would be better served if we integrated Matisse itself, rather than try to duplicate the effort. With the experience weve had to date with NetBeans technologies, were looking forward to further collaboration with its community."

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