IBM Launches Enhanced Software Development Platform

IBM today announced new products and major enhancements to the solutions from Rational software found in the IBM Software Development Platform.

"Basing our products on Eclipse and providing solutions that more tightly link business, development and operations, represents the most significant advancement in software development since Rational Suite first unified development teams over five years ago."

The solutions from Rational, including new products for architects, developers, testers and project managers, will unify software development teams on the open Eclipse framework.

Because Rational's new offerings are based on Eclipse, a single, open platform, every member of the software development team can now more effectively share information throughout the development process, improving the productivity, quality, and predictability of software development.

To support this, IBM today also announced "Ready for IBM Rational software," a program through which ISVs can integrate their solutions with the IBM Software Development Platform (www.ibm.com/software/news/n/pmcs65kjx5).

"These enhancements to the IBM Software Development Platform allow clients to better leverage software development to improve their business performance," said Mike Devlin, General Manager, IBM Rational.

While the IBM Software Development Platform includes a complete set of software development solutions, it is modular so that development teams can choose only the tools they need for their project.

IBM Rational Software Architect - a new design and development tool that will help software architects more efficiently specify and maintain all aspects of software application architecture.

Meanwhile the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company today announced plans to roll out new intelligent shopping carts from IBM and Cuesol that promise to transform grocery shopping, giving shoppers the power of an Internet computer at their fingertips.

Stop & Shop's new "Shopping Buddy" includes a wireless, touch-screen IBM computer on the shopping cart, equipped with a laser scanner to allow shoppers to scan items as they place them in the cart and to use loyalty cards to alert the store that they have arrived.

In the future, these intelligent shopping carts could offer such personal shopping assistance as: meal planning, sorted by such things as category, favorites, sale items, diet type, and preparation time, with supporting content such as health notes, recipes from a meal plan and wine information.