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IBM Helps Organizations Collaborate to Lower Risk and Cost of Software(Marketwire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ARMONK, NY, November 25 / MARKET WIRE/ -- In this era of globalization and economic change, organizations are facing growing pressures to use software as a competitive differentiator. To help companies address this challenge, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new offerings designed to lower software costs by helping business leaders and IT professionals more effectively collaborate. As a result, these businesses can now deliver high-quality software at a quicker pace, while meeting the evolving needs of the business. Using IBM's new Rational Quality Management Portfolio, key decision makers, such as CIOs, lawyers and financial consultants, now have a voice in the software delivery process. Today, businesses must meet a wide array of quality assurance standards before ever releasing a product to the public. When the software that runs these products fails to meet business needs or doesn't perform as expected -- a business lets down its customers, stakeholders, business partners, employees and ultimately their brand -- directly affecting their bottom line. For example, if a medical company is forced to recall a large amount of defibrillator devices due to defects in the software, they are wasting valuable time, money and resources that could have been saved by ensuring the software met stringent quality standards prior to delivering it to the marketplace. According to the Standish Group, businesses lose over $300B* annually in software-related downtimes. Furthermore, 41 percent of IT projects fail to deliver the expected business value and return on investment (ROI).** IBM Offers HP Business Partners a Comprehensive Quality Management Suite Unlike HP, which offers business partners simple, siloed tools geared strictly towards testing professionals, the IBM Rational Quality Management Portfolio ensures the entire workforce has a stake in delivering high quality software -- from the CIO to the developer, tester or project manager. As part of this initiative, IBM is releasing several products built on the Jazz platform, an extensive partner program and services to migrate customers from HP to IBM. Companies are increasingly recognizing the value of IBM's software strategy and portfolio and are quickly signing up to reap the benefits of IBM's partner program. In fact, over 300 partners are reselling IBM Quality Management products, an increase of over 200% since last year. For instance, TietoEnator, a European systems integrator, is partnering with IBM to help customers manage and run their business better. "With increased integration and greater version control capabilities, it is clear that Rational is offering one of the most highly comprehensive quality management portfolios in the marketplace," said Peer Eland, Principal & Team Leader, Test and QA Services, TietoEnator. "By providing IBM Rational Quality Manager built on the open Jazz platform, IBM offers IT organizations a wider variety of options to choose from when implementing quality management needs." Additionally, several companies are embracing IBM's Jazz-based offerings through the Ready for IBM Rational software integrations that expand Rational's quality management software beyond the competition. IBM Business Partners such as WebLayers, Surgient, VMLogix, CM-Logic, Device Anywhere and Sogeti are already taking advantage of IBM's open platform and plan to deliver new product integrations to market. Current HP customers and business partners who are looking to migrate to a complete portfolio can take advantage of IBM's 25% discount on its quality management software. This promotion, which can save clients more than US $5,000 in software license charges, is available for a limited time. For more information, please visit: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/migratetoibm/hp. New Software Helps Customers Improve Workforce Collaboration, Embrace Web 2.0 At the core of IBM's Rational Quality Management Portfolio is IBM Rational Quality Manager, a new, collaborative "hub" designed to unify IT professionals with key business stakeholders within an organization. IBM Rational Quality Manager ensures it is no longer the sole responsibility of the software developer to find bugs and deliver a high quality product to market. By ensuring all relevant members of the workforce are in-sync and have access to data in real-time, a company can more easily make informed decisions, better assign and utilize their resources, and react quickly to changes in the marketplace at a lower cost. Based on IBM's open, Jazz technology platform, Rational Quality Manager is able to provide this collaboration by using a Web-based centralized test management environment. IBM's open, Jazz technology platform helps Rational Quality Manager users With a dynamic, Web 2.0 interface, Rational Quality Manager is helping employees within an organization collaborate across business roles and beyond geographic boundaries. For example, a CIO can use Rational Quality Manager's dashboard to monitor the aspects of the software delivery process that are contributing to the development of a product. As a result of being informed in real-time, the CIO can make immediate decisions that are in line with the needs of the business, and deliver a high quality product to the marketplace on time and ahead of the competition. For instance, if a consumer electronics company has a target date for launching a new device, but just prior to the release they discover the software that runs it is bug-ridden, they lose valuable money and competitive edge by having to delay product sales. With the help of Rational Quality Manager, decision makers could have been alerted earlier on that there were potential hindrances, and they could have ensured IT professionals fixed those defects immediately, reducing delays and lost revenue. Also being introduced today, IBM Rational Test Lab Manager is a Web-based quality solution that helps companies reduce cost and increase energy savings by automating the testing process and ensuring an organization is using its lab resources effectively and efficiently. Up until this point, lab testing was treated as a manual task. In fact, organizations spend nearly 40% of their time configuring machines to make them ready for testing.*** By using Rational Test Lab Manager, an organization can save time and energy by automating these processes and reducing the amount of hardware used. As a result, customers will now have the ability to reprioritize these resources to other areas of their business. In related news, IBM is launching several other new releases of products within its Quality Management Portfolio including: IBM Rational Application Performance Analyzer, IBM Rational Functional Tester, IBM Rational Quality Manager Express, IBM Rational Performance Tester, IBM Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality, IBM Rational Test RealTime, IBM Rational AppScan Tester Edition, IBM Rational RequisitePro, IBM Rational Measured Capability Improvement Framework Assessments, Telelogic Rhapsody TestConductor, and IBM Rational Requirements Composer, which is expected later this year. "These new offerings provide invaluable capabilities to help customers significantly lower costs and risks in a way that no other competitor in the industry can," said Dr. Daniel Sabbah, general manager, IBM Rational Software. "Based on an open and highly adaptable, web-based infrastructure, organizations can now continuously improve the results of their software investments by automating quality assurance throughout the application delivery process, and by improving collaboration across all relevant stakeholders within their organization." For more information about IBM Rational's Quality Management Portfolio, visit: http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/offerings/quality/. *The Standish Group, Comparative Economic Normalization Technology Study, CHAOS Chronicles v12.3.9, June 30, 2008. **Dynamic Markets, 2007. ***Based on an IBM internal study of its own testing labs. Add to Digg Bookmark with del.icio.us Add to Newsvine Contact: Faye Abloeser IBM [email protected] Copyright ? 2008 Marketwire |