Over the last 6 months IBM has been heavily promoting BlueMix, the IBM cloud delivery platform based on IBMs open cloud architecture and Cloud Foundry. The platform is heavily aimed at developers, promoting the ability to rapidly deliver applications to the IBM cloud by leveraging auto provisioning, development frameworks and a very cool web IDE. But what makes BlueMix special is the idea that customers can start developing in a very modern flexible cloud environment whilst managing the risk of change and do this all with staying with IBM.
The same IBM that supports many other aspects of the customers IT infrastructure. As cloud development crosses the chasm, hybrid or combination development, will be the reality for many large organizations that will have to connect these new cloud developments with their more traditional development projects. IBM is well-placed with their knowledge of both worlds and their integration partner Tasktop.
As many of you know, Tasktop partners with IBM to provide software lifecycle integration by OEMing the IBM Rational Lifecycle Integration Adaptors Tasktop Edition, from us. Tasktop provides the integrations that enable IBM customers to connect their different tools, creating an integrated lifecycle supported by heterogenous tools. This integration technology already supports connecting on-premise tools like Rational Team Concert to cloud tools, such as Rally, but I would like to announce a technical preview for BlueMix.
Technical Preview for BlueMix
In this attached preview, you will see a typical scenario of an application being developed in BlueMix with testing being performed in HP QC, in a Testing Center of Excellence. This Testing Center of excellence uses an on-premise version of HP QC which integrates with Tasktop in real time to the BlueMix version of JazzHub. This supports the natural flow of work being done in BlueMix: tests undertaken in HP QC and the defects running back to the developers in BlueMix. This replaces the need for BlueMix developers to leave BlueMix and allows testers to work in their tool of choice. And this is just a preview of one scenario but because BlueMix is just another connector to the Tasktop integration bus, it opens up BlueMix to all the other lifecycle tools supported by Tasktop. For example, maybe requirements are being developed in IBM RRC, or the PMO wants to continue to report on project progress in Clarity or your organization is using ServiceNow and wants problems to automatically be pushed to developers in BlueMix. All of this is possible by connecting BlueMix to the software lifecycle with Tasktop.
If you are using BlueMix today and are interested in trying this technical preview please let me, or your Tasktop contact, know. We are excited to connect the worlds of cloud development and of traditional software delivery lifecycles together.
