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IBM Bolsters Rational Line for Mechatronics Development
Team Webtop is front and center, delivering a portal-like view into an integrated development environment
Beth Stackpole, Contributing Editor -- Design News, May 21, 2009
IBM is responding to the increased complexity of product design with a new development and delivery platform that better integrates the software piece with the physical aspects of mechanical and electrical engineering.
The new IBM Rational software products, along with a new set of consulting services, are designed to help teams building mechatronics products leverage software to drive innovation and gain a competitive edge. According to a study by Aberdeen Research, 66 percent of product manufacturers leverage software to drive product innovation, and of those companies, those that have established a best-in-of-class competency in software are infusing 4.4 times more software into their products.
"In the last five years, the means of innovation and competitive differentiation for companies in every industry is coming through the software," says John Carrillo, IBM's program director, strategic solutions. "We're announcing a new software development platform which is critically important for aligning collaboration in the development lifecycle. That takes on new meaning, especially for the mechatronics world."
Just as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools have helped companies put processes around an integrated development lifecycle on the physical side, the new IBM Rational tools promise to do the same for the software elements. "Traditionally, in a lot of companies, the software development organization has typically been the least aligned," Carrillo says. "A lot of companies have done a great job implementing PLM tools and processes to streamline the design of the physical parts of the products, but where they still struggle is on the soft assets."
One of the centerpieces of IBM's new lineup is Rational Team Webtop, a Web-based platform powered by its Jazz technology, which delivers a portal-like view into an integrated environment comprising such disciplines as requirements, testing and model-driven engineering. The Team Webtop portal integrates previously siloed environments, allowing users to better understand the impact of changes.
The IBM Rational DOORS requirements management tool has been enhanced with new Web-based collaboration features that allow an expanded set of stakeholders to review, analyze and modify requirements, avoiding much of the cumbersome, paper-based review process that is still common among development teams today. Finally, a new version of IBM Rational Team Concert, also based on the Jazz technology platform, will provide new levels of scalability and security to enable collaborative, agile development among distributed product teams. IBM Rhapsody, the companies' model-driven system and development tool, has also been updated with new agile workflow and modeling capabilities.
"As we start talking about mechatronics and reliance on embedded software, we see more and more companies interested in modeling," Carrillo says. "Being able to visually characterize what the requirements are and what the software is supposed to do from a functional perspective before someone builds it – that's how you find bugs and design defects earlier in the process."
Accompanying the new Rational software, IBM opened its first Solutions Experience Lab for Systems Engineering and Embedded Software at the IBM Innovation Center in Waltham, MA. Here, customers can explore design techniques using solutions from IBM and its business partners. There are also new consulting services in this area from IBM Global Business Services.
IBMs Rational Team Webtop presents information from multiple software delivery tools in a single Web-based view.
