IBM strengthens ties with Rational but keeps the agnostic faith

2000-02-14

There’s something about IBM at the moment. According to repeated announcements, the company is embracing new technologies, forging alliances and striding headlong into the future with all the gay abandon it can muster. At the same time, reading between the lines, IBM is doing exactly the opposite – holding on to the old, keeping the competition sweet and, above all, ensuring that it does not close off any options it may have. In these turbulent times such a risk-averse position may be wise, despite falling short of the visionary attitude that we could hope for from the largest computer company in the world. A recent example is IBM’s stance on operating systems: Linux is the future, but so is NT, AIX, OS/390 and any other you care to mention. More recently the focus has been on development tools or, more specifically, Rational’s suite of application development products.

Rational first got into bed with IBM in July last year, forging a strategic alliance that would “help customers accelerate the development and deployment of e-business applications,” according to the press release. In practice this meant the provision of an XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) bridge between Rational Rose and IBM’s Visual Age, with both tools continuing to be developed and promoted. It has taken the two companies a full six months to deepen the interoperability between their toolsets - last week’s announcements, “strengthening the alliance,” were the further integration, via another open standard – WebDAV – of VisualAge with Rational’s ClearCase and ClearQuest configuration and change management tools.

IBM’s slow agnosticism can only be frustrating for Rational, despite the clear potential revenue stream for the company that the alliance can make. The bridges between the products are all open standards that are being adopted by the majority of tools providers including Microsoft, Sterling and Princeton Softech. Hence Rational may be being given a head start on the other vendors, but ultimately the aim is that all platforms will interoperate and exchange information. Rational’s frustration, founded in its desire to leverage the relationship before the other vendors catch up, was hinted at by Eric Schurr, senior vice president of Marketing and Suite Products at Rational, when he said that “this [recent announcement] is evidence that the IBM-Rational relationship is more than a paper relationship.” This begs the question – was it just a paper relationship in the past?

In the relationship between IBM and Rational, it is the latter that stands to gain the most. Unlike IBM, Rational cannot afford the luxury of covering all its bases. Its product set is limited to the relatively closed world of application development, whereas IBM can offer it safe passage to the Shangri La of eBusiness. Tools providers have always faced the squeeze – this is a situation which will not change (if anything, it will become more difficult, as Microsoft exploits the most valuable resource that is Visio – you heard it here first). Frustrating it may be, but without such relationships it is difficult to see how Rational will succeed.

One final note about WebDAV, or “Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning." This standard has been ratified by the IETF and has the support of Software Configuration Management vendors and Document Management vendors alike. I have long been of the opinion that the two disciplines represent two routes up the same mountain. It is very good news that an interchange format has been agreed between the two camps: Hopefully we shall see some merging of their related disciplines before too long.

(First published 14 February 2000)