IBM launches business-on-demand wares. (APP Dev News Review).

IBM Corp has launched a raft of new software that it says will help companies to get nearer to the goal of business on demand, including the first new product from its Rational division since it acquired the company in December 2002.

At its European Software Symposium in Munich, Germany, it announced that it has expanded its WebSphere integration platform with the addition of 48 new software, services and business partner content bundles, aimed at 11 different vertical sectors. The goal is to enable companies in those sectors to more easily and quickly integrate different areas of their business and those of their customers and partners.

IBM also announced DB2 Information Integrator, which it said will help enterprises to access, integrate, manage and analyze information. It said it will give users a single view of their data, and offer real-time integration of structured and unstructured data, as if it were stored in one place. DB2 Information Integrator can also access data stored in Oracle, Documentum, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Excel and WebSphere systems, and present it in a consolidated view.

IBM also introduced a low-end messaging offering, Lotus Workplace Messaging. IBM said it is pitching the product at "deskless" workers within an organization, such as factory floor workers, retail clerks, airline employees and others who do not typically have access to email.

Ambuj Goyal, who is the general manager of Lotus Software Group, said that about half of the employees in most Fortune 500 companies do not currently have messaging software, so this represents a massive potential market. He said the software is priced to come in at under $1 per user per month in certain configurations.

IBM also highlighted IBM Rational Rapid Developer, which it described as an architected rapid application development (ARAD) environment enabling developers to build Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications. IBM reaffirmed that its Rational software will continue to support non-IBM environments including Java, J2EE, Linux, Microsoft .NET, C, C++, and a number of embedded operating systems.

Even though Rational is better known for software modeling and team-based development tools, Eric Schurr, VP marketing for Rational software products told ComputerWire that the new RAD tool is a logical move for IBM, because it now aims to cover the entire application lifecycle, from modeling through to deployment and management. He also said that the new RAD tool integrates with IBM's WebSphere Studio development environment.

The Rational Rapid Developer is said to come in beneath existing development tools in the IBM software portfolio, offering better ease of use and a more visual, model-driven environment for less code-savvy developers.

The company also announced that it has expanded its extended Developer Experience (XDE) with XDE Tester for software testing, and an enhanced version of XDE Developer. XDE Tester runs inside WebSphere Studio 5.0 and Eclipse 2.0, and offers functional testing of Java clients and web-based applications.

The Rational Unified Process (RUP), the company's process for software development, also got a make-over. It offers improved content, and is easier to configure and personalize for different organizations, projects and individual users.