Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
News
IBM Opens Jazz Dev Community
1/28/2008
IBM announced last week that it would open up its Jazz.net development platform to developers. Jazz.net is an open commercial software development community that helps to create global collaboration solutions based on IBM Rational technology. Jazz was originally open only to IBM staff, academics and customers. Now, any registered Jazz contributor can influence projects using the open standards, Eclipse-based Jazz platform.
IBM also announced IBM Rational Team Concert Express beta 2, the first planned product based on the Jazz technology platform. The product is designed to help small and mid-sized development teams located around the world collaborate on projects in real time. It aids companies with widely distributed workforces or organizations that need to facilitate communication between groups. The solution uses Web 2.0-style dashboards to illustrate the project status information. Users can use IBM's DB2 database or other databases as a repository for project information.
The new solution is referred to as one of "a new family of development servers" that IBM is working on, according to the company's press release. While IBM Rational Team Concert Express has an open source flavor, the aim of the Jazz project is still commercial. The technology supports open standards for middleware, and those open standards are also used by IBM in its WebSphere servers and in the open source Apache Tomcat server, according to IBM's announcement.
The Jazz project simply opens up the development process to include customer feedback, according to Dr. Danny Sabbah, IBM's general manager of Rational Software.
"Open commercial development at Jazz.net is changing the way IBM products are delivered to customers by making the process truly a community effort," Sabbah stated in the announcement.
Most of the IBM Rational portfolio will gradually evolve to include Jazz technology, facilitating the integration of IBM's products with those of its partners, the announcement added.
The beta 2 version of IBM Rational Team Concert Express is currently available at Jazz.net. IBM plans to make it available as a product sometime later this year, although qualified open source projects and academic organizations will be able to use it for free.
Another project that is being developed as part of Jazz.net is Project Bluegrass, which aims to create a more visual user interface for collaboration and communication among teammates. It's designed for post-Baby Boomer generations.
Will Kraft is a Web designer, technical consultant, and freelance writer. His website is Pagewizard Web Design. You can contact Will at will@pagewizardwebdesign.com.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Sun, Stanford Working To Archive History
In May in San Francisco, experts from leading universities, libraries, and research institutions around the world met as part of an ongoing effort to address a pressing issue: archiving the world's history, right up to today.
- The Quilt Coalition Rolls Out XO Communications for High-Capacity Network Services
The Quilt, a coalition of 28 regional network organizations, has added XO Communications Services to its authorized vendor list. The Quilt represents 200 universities and thousands of other educational institutions across the United States. With this new relationship, Quilt members can purchase XO's high-speed IP transit and network transport services at competitive rates.
- Wimba Classroom 5.2 Expands Classroom Capture Support, Adds MP3 Downloads
At the NECC 2008 conference in Texas this week, Wimba launched a new version of Wimba Classroom, the virtual classroom component of the company's Collaboration Suite. The new 5.2 release expands options for classroom capture and adds a variety of other functional and ease of use features.
- Automation Chimera: Education Is Not Management
The lure of automating workflow online so human intervention is minimized is continually reinforced in the minds of higher education administrators by examples of automated campus systems such as financials, student information systems, and other enterprise systems. But what's good for management is not always good for learning.
- Cognos Releases BI Software for Linux-based IBM System z Mainframe
Cognos, which IBM acquired in January, has released an update to its business intelligence software that will run on the Linux operating system on IBM System z mainframes. IBM Cognos 8 BI was being developed by the two companies prior to the acquisition, but assimilation of Cognos into IBM accelerated development.
- Facebook and Collegiality: A Serendipitous Social Niche
Facebook is a way to greet a colleague as if she or he is on your own campus: a wave at a distance, a hello at the corner burrito place, a honk as you both leave the campus parking lot. Informal collegiality has been extended over the miles.
