IBM Announces New Offerings to Help Organizations Drive Innovation While Managing Cost and Risk

ORLANDO, Fla., June 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- At the INNOVATE 2010 conference, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new software and services that help customers design and deliver the advanced products leading the convergence of mechanical, electronic, and digital technologies.

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The convergence of physical assets and IT applications requires a new "systems of systems" approach for integrating products and services. Software-driven innovation across product lines is often challenging if not supported by effective planning, development and collaboration.  Best-in-class product and service companies are those that build a strong competency in systems engineering and software development. Organizations of the future—along with their partners and customers— must build the competencies to design, deliver and manage products in smarter ways. IBM is announcing new initiatives to support the design, development and life-cycle integration of innovative products and services:

• Integrated Product Management Offerings:  A set of IBM software and hardware offerings and best practices from across the IBM and Business Partner organizations that help design, deliver and subsequently manage the lifecycle of increasingly complex offerings, including product planning, software development, software design chain and asset management.
• Flexible, Affordable Software Development:  As organizations strive to reduce their capital expenditures and operational expenses, new deployment and licensing models can help them meet these goals.  IBM is providing new cloud test and development offerings, in both private and public environments.  In addition, IBM is offering a new flexible software licensing model designed to reduce license acquisition costs and increase productivity.
• Support for IBM Industry Frameworks and Customized Solutions: To support and extend the new Integrated Product Management initiative, and offer customers continual improvement unique to the challenges of their industries, IBM is investing in new best practices, assets and workbenches optimized to specific industry vertical use cases.

"The value, lifecycle and ecosystem of any smart product today are driven by software," said Dr. Daniel Sabbah, IBM Rational general manager. "In order to build an enduring and innovative competency in software delivery, it must be managed as an agile and cost-effective business process within a framework that allows continuous improvements and accommodates change."

Managing the Integrated Product Lifecycle

Integrated Product Management is a new set of capabilities that brings together over 30 IBM offerings including, hardware, software and services helping customers manage the entire product development and integration spectrum.  IBM's Integrated Product Management offerings, based on solutions and software from IBM Rational, provide a holistic environment in which to design and deliver software while sustaining competitive differentiation through continuous innovation.  Today, software development and delivery teams are being asked to respond to changes in the marketplace more quickly—but with fewer resources and mounting pressure to deliver more value.  IBM can help speed innovation with reduced cost and risk by deploying a flexible environment for software design, development and delivery on multiple platforms.  

New Licensing Options Allow Infrastructure Flexibility & Affordability

Software development projects typically use different mixes of products at different times because of changing project usage patterns. As a result, licenses may not be used for a given project as anticipated and therefore end up "sitting on the shelf" for large periods of time during a project lifecycle.

IBM's new token and term licensing models provide instant flexibility, giving customers access to the right software at the right time during a project, without an abundance of shelfware or the hassle of a new PO or evaluation process.  With tokens, users can quickly move between products as the capabilities are required without needing to calculate the anticipated number of licenses for each product, taking the guesswork out of product usage. The term license model allows for product usage over a given period of time. Each model adds to the flexibility needed in today's innovative environments.

Licensing options available today included token, floating, term or perpetual licenses. Most organizations will use an effective mix of multiple licensing structures to drive the optimal productivity of their software delivery teams.

Rapid Deployment in the Cloud

As cloud computing brings an array of options to software development, organizations pilot and prove cloud computing models, and provide the tools to extend cloud offerings into production. Today, IBM announced Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing support for IBM Cloudburst.  IBM Cloudburst is a prepackaged and self-contained service delivery platform that can be easily and quickly implemented in a data center to deliver the efficiencies of cloud computing. IBM Rational Software delivery services for cloud computing help leverage the cloud to transform software by providing software development and test solutions across multiple platforms, available for private cloud deployments on the IBM Smart Business Development and Test Cloud and as an offering for IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud.

Industry Frameworks Help with Competitive Differentiation

In order to solve industry-specific problems and create opportunities for clients to competitively differentiate their products and services, IBM offers Industry Frameworks based on tens of thousands of engagements across the spectrum of sectors and industry categories. These solution platforms deliver the full power of IBM middleware combined with industry standards and best practices.  Since these are based on specific usage patterns, they are highly repeatable and help clients create sustainable assets.

IBM Rational software is adding new value to these frameworks with software and systems development solutions that leverage the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform to improve collaboration. Specifically Rational has added products and services into the IBM Insurance Industry Framework, the IBM Banking Industry Framework, the Chemicals and Petroleum Integrated Information Framework, and the Service Provider Delivery Environment Framework.

In order to facilitate innovative software design and management for specific industries, IBM is also unveiling a library of software available at no cost that delivers the building blocks critical for smarter planet projects. The library is called the Integrated Service Management Library and contains 1,800 software accelerators developed by IBM and third parties to help customers create more intelligent operations in 14 industries including automotive, aerospace and finance.  These software connectors help the digital and physical worlds talk to each other to better manage a company's equipment, buildings, IT operations and business services.

Additionally, IBM also announced today its intention to establish an open source project on Eclipse.org for the EGL technology.  EGL, a business application programming language created by IBM, is designed for developing portable, cross-platform applications and services that can be deployed to the appropriate runtime environments based on the evolving needs of the business. This is possible because EGL code is not tied to one particular platform, virtual machine, or runtime environment. EGL code compiles into popular languages like Java, JavaScript, and COBOL, which then executes on proven, ubiquitous environments.  IBM is helping customers become more agile by facilitating their transition away from costly and aging environments, tools, and languages to a modern language (EGL) and Eclipse-based tool set.  

For more information on IBM Rational: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/

For more information on the IBM Innovate Software Conference, visit: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/innovate/?S_CMP=HPHERO&ca=rh

To access the INNOVATE 2010 online press kit, visit: http://www.ibm.com/press/innovate2010.

SOURCE IBM