Q: What was announced on January 14, 2008 with respect to Jazz?

A: We are announced three things:

Jazz.net is open to all. While thousands of IBMers, Rational customers and business partners have already participated in the design and development of the Jazz technology platform, we've lifted the curtain so that anyone and everyone can participate. All you need to do is join the community where Jazz technology is being developed at Jazz.net and register. We feel it’s important to build this technology in a transparent and collaborative fashion in partnership with the customers that will rely on it.

Rational Team Concert Express is now available in Beta. Software developers around the world can now download and participate in the Rational Team Concert Express Beta – the first IBM product based on the Jazz technology. Rational Team Concert is a collaborative environment for automating the activities involved in team-based software delivery. It is optimized for agile development teams, especially those that are geographically distributed.

IBM is announcing its intention to make Rational Team Concert Express free of charge to the academic community and teams working on qualified open source projects.

Q: Is Jazz a new product? Can I buy Jazz or license Jazz?

A: Jazz is a new technology platform developed by Rational. You will be able to purchase products that are based on this technology platform, and we may also license the Jazz Platform itself on an OEM basis. Our intent is that over the next 2-3 years most of our existing products will either be rebased on the Jazz Platform or integrate with it. We plan to also offer new offerings based on Jazz such as Rational Team Concert Express.

Q: How is Jazz different?

• Collaborate in context. Jazz technology tracks and manages the relationships between artifacts, promotes sound development processes, and gathers project information automatically and unobtrusively to deliver unprecedented lifecycle integration. Jazz facilitates collaboration by taking a Web 2.0 approach to community-based innovation.
• Right-size governance. The Jazz platform empowers teams to capture, share and automate best practices at varying degrees of rigor. You can easily fine-tune your governance process over time—avoiding the need to define everything up front. You can also vary process flexibility over the lifespan of a project to promote early-stage experimentation and late-stage stabilization. Built-in process awareness and automation makes it easy for both individuals and teams to “do the right thing” and “do things right”.
• Choose your own path. Jazz technology is built on open Web and OSGi standards and leverages the Eclipse platform. Its open and extensible architecture is designed to give you the flexibility to assemble your own software delivery platform, relying on your preferred vendors and solutions. Jazz is architected to enable a broad range of clients. Jazz has an open middleware interface, which means you will be able to install Jazz-based products using open source middleware, such as Tomcat™, Derby, and Jabber®; commercial middleware from IBM WebSphere®, DB2® and Lotus®; or even third-party products from vendors such as Oracle.®.

Q: What features does Jazz technology provide to the products which leverage it?

• A: Team awareness and automation -- Team members can see who else is logged in, what they are working on, and will automatically be notified of changes, inputs and milestones that impact their work.
• Process awareness and automation -- A customized project process guides team workflow and automates process steps and checkpoints at varying degrees of rigor.
• Collaboration features – Jazz provides project-integrated presence and messaging.
• Work item tracking – Jazz automatically creates and tracks progress of individual work items in accordance with team process and project rules.
• Team build – Jazz enables efficient scheduling and execution of software build processes. You can leverage multiple servers for rapid, cross-platform build processing, and create a detailed bill of materials to guarantee build reproducibility.
• Software configuration management—Jazz provides essential software version control, workspace management and parallel development support to individuals and teams.
• Flexible, rules-based process definition—You can specify and modify process rules for different teams, projects and project phases. By allowing you to modify your governance processes over time, you avoid the need to define everything up front.
• Project dashboards -- Project, individual and team dashboards provide accurate project health information drawn directly from ongoing work, replacing tedious and time-consuming reporting overhead.
• Flexible Administration model You can efficiently add/remove users, provision new users, set up new projects, modify new or existing team processes and rules, and create and modify team, workgroup or enterprise-specific rules.
• Extensible infrastructure--Both the Jazz platform client and server are based on open Web standards as well as the Eclipse plug-in extensibility infrastructure and are designed to be extended with additional plug-ins.
• Connector framework—This framework for integrating with other source control and change management systems such as ClearCase, ClearQuest, and Subversion, improves your flexibility in assembling your ideal infrastructure.
• Customizable client architecture Jazz provides plug-in extension capabilities based on the Eclipse plug-in infrastructure. For example, you can add new artifact types, modify server-based process workflows or add new security rules.
• Open middleware interface – You can use Jazz-based products with your choice of open source middleware—Tomcat™, Derby, Jabber®—and commercial middleware—WebSphere®, DB2®, Lotus and Oracle®.

Q: How can customers gain the benefits of the Jazz platform?

A: There are two pathways to realizing the benefits of the Jazz platform: an evolutionary path optimized for the majority of Rational customers, and a revolutionary path optimized for agile teams. Over time, these two pathways are planned to converge, resulting in a unified next-generation platform for collaborative software delivery.
Rational customers are already on the evolutionary path. Many products within the Rational portfolio are planned to evolve to the Jazz technology platform. A wide range of interoperability options are planned to be available, allowing customers to adopt Jazz technology at the timing and pace that makes sense for them. Interoperability options with Rational ClearCase®, ClearQuest® and third-party products will also be available.
Agile teams can join the Jazz revolution. Agile software development teams can get started with easy-to-use, team-based products built from the ground-up with Jazz technology. Rational Team Concert Express will be the first offering in this new, Jazz-bred product family.

Q: When will Rational Team Concert packaging and pricing be finalized?

A: We intend to finalize packaging and pricing of the Rational Team Concert family by June 1, to coincide with the June 1-5 Rational Software Development Conference in Orlando, Florida.