Cape Clear Software Inc. Monday announced its membership in the Eclipse Foundation, the open-source community focused on building and maintaining an open-source development platform that spans the application lifecycle.
By aligning its tools strategy with the Eclipse tools platform, Cape Clear joins a host of others independent software vendors who have standardized on the fast-growing Eclipse standard IDE (integrated development environment), rather than start from scratch with a proprietary or other technology.
“Cape Clear joining Eclipse is probably notable only in that it shows that Eclipse has reached the point where its now the default IDE of choice for most vendors,” said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC., in Waltham, Mass. “Indeed, there is very little value in startup and emerging technology vendors developing their own IDE, so I think were finally at that point.”
Cape Clears move will enhance the functionality of Cape Clear Studio, a component of Cape Clears latest release, Cape Clear 6.5, the company said. Cape Clear Studio is an integrated toolset based on the Eclipse IDE, and it includes support for the BPEL (Business process Execution Language, XML, Web Services Description Language and Java development tools. The toolset is used to build SOA (service-oriented architecture) applications.
Officials at the Waltham, Mass., company said Cape Clear intends to work with Eclipse open-source initiatives to contribute new capabilities for a range of Eclipse activities, including the Eclipse Web Tools Platform, an Eclipse project conceived to simplify the development of Web-centric applications.
“Cape Clear Studio is a key component in our strategy to provide the fastest, simplest and most proven way to build SOA-based applications. In our effort to reduce the costs of application development, it is important for us to maximize the productivity of developers using the Cape Clear Studio,” said Jim Rivera, Cape Clears vice president of product management, in a statement. “Our involvement in the Eclipse community helps us accelerate the delivery of new tooling capabilities to the marketplace and ensure the success of a framework that has become a strategic part of our product offering.”
Meanwhile, Cape Clear joins Eclipse as a plug-in provider and will build tools that extend the usefulness and reach of the Eclipse platform.
“Cape Clears leadership in simplifying Web services development makes them a welcome addition to the Eclipse ecosystem,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, in a statement.