NEW ORLEANS—IBM Thursday announced a series of new technologies, tools, and educational and marketing programs for developers, including new initiatives to help ISVs develop business applications running on IBMs middleware.
At its developerWorks Live! Conference here, IBM announced its ISV Advantage Initiative program.
Focused on ISVs that target the small to medium-size business (SMB) market, the program will carry with it the proven capabilities of IBMs support arm as well as IBMs mid-market-focused IBM Express middleware IBM eServer hardware systems.
At the show, IBM announced three partners to join the program: Intuit Eclipse, Distribution Management Solutions, a division of Intuit, Inc.; daly.commerce; and VAI, or Vormittag Associates Inc.
IBM also introduced a new Linux solution, called Integrated Platform Express, which features a bundle including IBMs WebSphere Express and DB2 Express running on an Intel-based IBM eServer xSeries machine.
Also at the show, IBM previewed an Express Runtime to help developers create applications, and the company announced a new alphaWorks licensing program where SMB developers can acquire emerging technologies from IBM Research for less than $100.
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Buell Duncan, general manager of IBM Developer Relations, said the Linux platform is growing at 34 percent a year and with IBM offering systems that run across Intel, IBM RISC systems and mainframes, “that creates a lot of places where Linux can land.”
In his keynote address Thursday, Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive of IBM Software, said, “developers go where the money is. They go where the opportunities are, and IBMs success in the marketplace is equally important” to driving new developers to the IBM platform.
Mills said that the developerWorks initiative has grown to be one of the most successful initiatives for IBM. “We became a popular provider of information around Java, Linux and Web services, so we are a natural magnet” for developers, he said. And the IBM-sponsored Eclipse open-source Java-based application development platform “has been an extraordinary point of attraction to help grow the number of developers focusing on IBM.”
IBM also announced new autonomic, or self-healing, capabilities for its technology. The company announced the Tivoli Autonomic Monitoring Engine, which can automatically detect resource outages and potential problems before they impact system performance. The product is targeted at enterprise customers and ISVs.
The systems giant also announced a new developerWorks Toolbox subscription, where developers who subscribe get a 50 percent savings on IBM middleware and tools, Duncan said.
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