IBM and partners promise 20 new products around IBM's collaborative-development tool.
ORLANDO, Fla.At its Rational Software Development Conference here, IBM plans to officially launch more than 20 products based on and connected to its Jazz-collaborative development environment.
Dave Locke, director of worldwide marketing for IBM Rational, said that what the Eclipse integrated-development environment did for bringing desktop development together, Jazz is doing for collaboration.
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"So in this announcement we're delivering on the promise of Jazz," he said. There are several Jazz-based products coming from IBM as well as others from IBM partners, he said.
Locke said IBM on June 2 will announce new software that will transform how people will collaborate, thereby driving greater value and performance from their globally distributed software investments. The new offerings will use IBM's Jazz-collaborative technology to help geographically distributed software delivery teams work together in a transparent manner.
Meanwhile, according to Forrester Research, only 37 percent of stakeholders are satisfied with the speed of internal-application development, and just 42 percent are satisfied with the quality. With its Jazz platform, IBM wants to transform software delivery into a dynamic integration of people, processes and projects, Locke said. As the scope of software development and delivery broadens in this era of globalization, IBM is incorporating social networking and Web 2.0 practices into the new versions of its market-leading software delivery platform, he said.
By the end of this year, IBM and its business partners expect to release 20 products based on Jazz. The new IBM software will help development teams of all sizes improve productivity and manage project requirements in real-time.
"One of the key things we're pushing is how to transform how people work together, and the first product in that regard is Rational Team Concert," Locke said. "This is the first instantiation of Jazz as a product."
Available June 30, Team Concert incorporates social-networking technologies, such as instant messaging and presence awareness, into the management of a software-delivery project on a global scale, Locke said. The tool automates data gathering, which officials say results in 50 percent less documentation, meetings and status reports. The product also will feature a connector to Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE (integrated development environment) later this year, Locke said.
He said IBM is initially delivering the product in three versions, including Express-C Edition, a free version available for download here using open-source Tomcat and Derby, and targeted at teams with up to 10 users, Locke said. For teams with 10 to 50 people, the second version, IBM Rational Team Concert Express, uses transparent development and out-of-the-box processes and process enactment, Locke said. The third version, IBM Rational Team Concert Standard Edition, is optimized for mid-sized companies and smaller teams in large companies. It includes a fuller set of capabilities such as customizable process, real-time project health, enterprise scalability and extensibility.
In 2009, IBM will deliver IBM Rational Team Concert Enterprise Edition to focus on enterprise-wide application development using capabilities that any size team can use, including work item management and greater source code and configuration management. IBM Rational Team Concert Enterprise Edition is expected to include full equivalent versions of IBM Rational ClearCase, IBM Rational ClearQuest and IBM Rational Build Forge. Locke said.
In addition, IBM is introducing a beta of 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. The company also is delivering a beta of IBM Rational quality manager, a test planning and process solution that provides a single view into all aspects of a quality plan.
Application Development 
