Rational Development as IBM Acquires BuildForge
By Tony Lock
IBM has announced it has acquired BuildForge Inc., a
privately held software company based in Texas. As is now the rule for such
acquisitions, no financial details of the deal were revealed. BuildForge
specializes in software tools that help automate the build-and-release
processes associated with application development and delivery. In addition to
accelerating software build-and-release cycles, the combination of the tools of
BuildForge and IBM’s Rational Software Division will help
automate, audit, and document the software development process thereby greatly
enhancing the governance of the software production process. The transaction
will see around forty members of staff transfer to IBM in addition to the technology itself. The main
software tools involved in the acquisition are BuildForge FullControl, which is
used to manage and control builds and releases during the software development
cycle; BuildForge FullThrottle, a build accelerator to execute processes
concurrently across server pools; BuildForge Prism, a workstation IDE client providing developer self-service
capabilities; and BuildForge Adaptors, a range of tools to integrate BuildForge
products with a wide variety of third-party change and configuration management
tools. IBM plans initially to make the BuildForge tools
available without any change while it decides on how to market the tools in the
longer term and to evaluate the potential for further product integration.
IBM has invested considerable time and effort over
the course of the last three years since its acquisition of Rational enhancing
and expanding its application/software development solutions. For the many
organizations that develop software systems or applications the necessity to
create and release software on shorter time scales grows ever stronger. At the
same time, businesses are under greater pressure than at any time in their
history to demonstrate that all facets of their operations, including software
development, work in strict accord with an expanding battery of regulatory and
compliance requirements. It goes without saying that it is now expected that
all code released into use be of exceptionally high quality while the
associated production costs must, of course, be minimized.
The combination of
BuildForge components and IBM’s
Rational systems will create a software development
package that could attract a variety of potential users. While IBM Rational is a platform deployed very widely
around the world, BuildForge has a relatively small, though high-quality,
customer base, the majority of it located in North America. Making BuildForge
available via IBM’s extensive sales and partner channels clearly
holds great potential to expand usage of the tools and there is likely to be
great interest, especially in the areas where governance and regulatory
management are important, i.e., most places. Equally Rational’s customers
should find BuildForge straight forward to utilize as a large proportion of the
existing customer base of BuildForge make use of the IBM technology. However, IBM will need to take some effort into marketing
BuildForge in Europe and further afield.
Sun
Announces Its Latest NAS Solution
By Clay Ryder
Sun Microsystems has
announced the Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance, the first NAS solution based
on the AMD Opteron processor model 252. The Sun StorageTek
5320 NAS Appliance builds on the Sun StorEdge 5000 NAS Appliance family, and
also delivers investment protection via a data-in-place upgrade. Key features
include iSCSI support , Microsoft Windows Hardware certified for Windows and
Exchange environments; Gateway Support, for the midrange Sun StorEdge 6130 and
6920 systems and Sun's high-end disk portfolio, as well as Sun's FlexLine
systems; Integrated realtime file system data protection against computer
viruses certified with multiple scanning engines including Symantec AntiVirus
Scan Engine; Compliance Archiving Software Option that stores and protects
information and provides WORM functionality; and Sun's StorEdge Compliance
Archiving System, a combination of Sun NAS technology with Sun StorEdge
Compliance Archiving software, providing authenticity, integrity, ready access,
and security supporting regulations including SEC 240, 17a-4. In addition, Sun
NAS solutions with enterprise content management software and email archiving
solutions allow companies to automate eDiscovery searches, providing audit logs
and identity information, and ensuring rapid retrieval in the event of
litigation. Sun reiterated its Installation, Configuration, Integration, Data
Migration, Operations Migration, Business Continuity
and Disaster Recovery services that aim to assist customers optimize and manage
the performance of Sun NAS appliances. The company also expanded its Try and
Buy Program to include storage products, which now allows customers and
resellers to evaluate and test a Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance at no charge
for sixty days, with the option to purchase the system at the end. The Sun
StorageTek 5320 NAS appliance is available now through Sun and its reseller
partners, starting at $49,990 (U.S. list) for a 2.0TB system.
There has been a lot of
news about Sun recently, much of it focused on the changing of the guard at the
top. However, there have been other activities as well. With this offering, we
see Sun continue to build its momentum with respect to storage and seeking to
bring to market value that would address customers of many stripes. In
particular, the antiviral and Windows-friendly focus of the product will likely
appeal to SMBs or departmental organizations that have strategic commitments to
the Windows environment but also would like to take advantage of the relative
simplicity of the NAS value proposition. At the same time, the compliance
option combined with ECM and archival initiatives could bring a level of governance/discipline
for organizations who might not have legal reporting
requirements, but would benefit from an enhanced approach to information
storage that in many past scenarios may have required investments beyond the
reach of some.
While we believe 5320
will appeal to various segments of the marketplace, at a higher level we are
pleased to see much of the discussion around the product focused not on
hardware but rather on software-driven abilities. Perhaps one of Sun’s best
kept secrets is that it is a software company too, and the company has a
history of adding software value to solutions. With the recent coronation of
Jonathan Schwartz as Sun’s CEO,
we are hopeful that the company will be more consistent and perhaps even more
strident in its endorsement of its software abilities. This is not a call for
more bashing of software costs in the marketplace a la McNealy, but rather the
recognition of the 1 + 1 = 3 value proposition of IT solutions that
holistically consider hardware, software, services, and financing in total. Sun
has tended to do well when it can rewrite the rules of the marketplace; some of
its more novel approaches to financing are reflective of this. This solutions
or systems approach is increasingly where we see the market going, and systems
vendors such as Sun have an inherent advantage in this approach. Time will tell
how well the market responds to the 5320, but we are nevertheless heartened by
this announcement and look forward to see how Sun responds to the market under
the tutelage of its new software savvy CEO.
UGS
and Microsoft Team Up
By Susan Dietz
Microsoft and UGS
Corporation recently announced a partnership between their two software
packages aimed especially at benefiting the manufacturing segment. A variation of
UGS’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software will now be offered on a
Microsoft platform. The
full solution is envisioned as a way in which manufacturers would have the
ability to create and manage all their product data in a single environment,
while allowing global team members, customers, industry partners, and vendors
to have access to the company-wide system. The goal is that companies and their
partners be able to be more innovative, and to drive profitability by getting
products to market faster. The Microsoft packages used by the merger are
Microsoft .NET, Visual Studio 2005, ASP.NET 2.0, Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL
Server 2005. The software packages utilized by UGS Corporation are both
Teamcenter software and UGS Velocity Series portfolio. Price point is not mentioned, but is
most likely driven by the amount of service contracted and the extent of the
software’s use.
It’s a delicate balance
in any corporation to enforce a high level of security and enable people’s
access to information at the same time. That balance becomes even more
precarious when industry partners and vendors are included in the software
access. So here
we come around again to the industry buzzword of the year, compliance. We are not
convinced that the PLM software enabled on the Microsoft platform would be
secure enough without extra measures taken, which means adding another layer of
complexity onto the system, increasing potential headaches exponentially. We could be wrong,
but we haven’t seen much in the literature beyond the usual vague “yeah yeah
yeah” security assurances.
It seems that companies have a hard enough time enforcing
compliance within their own borders; adding in other companies with people who
have little to zero loyalty to another business may just prove to be
detrimental.
UGS using a Microsoft
platform, however, seems to be a pretty smart positioning move. Microsoft is an
internationally recognized and used operating system, so any software that can successfully
piggyback probably stands a good chance of being adopted more widely than
otherwise. Nevertheless,
there could be drawbacks to being associated with Microsoft. Recent legislation issues in Europe and Japan have taken a bit of the shine off of
Microsoft’s image, perhaps with a resultant slight tarnishing of any partners,
particularly in the countries in question. This could, of course, result in fewer
sales. However,
Microsoft has bounced back before and will likely bounce back again, bringing
along others for the roller coaster-like ride.
