Ashish Patel

It’s been a month since the webcast on IBM Problem Resolution Toolkit and IBM Performance Optimization Toolkit, which were both announced at the Rational Conference in Las Vegas in June 2005.I figured it was time to see what Google indexed on these two toolkits as I put in countless hours into their conception during an Extreme Blue Internship and commercialization while working for IBM last year. So lets see what Google found:

Results 1 - 10 of about 181 for “IBM Problem Resolution Toolkit”. (0.86 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 186 for “IBM Performance Optimization Toolkit”. (0.29 seconds)

The searches pull up several important things.

• Links to IBM’s DeveloperWorks website from which you can download the toolkits (but you got to have IBM Rational Application Developer or IBM Performance Tester products). I have added the links to these websites below (just click the “Read More” link).
• News Articles.
  • IBM.com: New IBM Technology Speeds, Simplifies Discovery and Repair of Business Application Problems
  • Redmond Magazine: Sharing Data Between Operations and Development Goal of New IBM Tools
    
  • WebSphere Focus: Rationalizing WebSphere tools strategy
  • Computer World: IBM Unveils Tools to Link Rational, Tivoli Software
    
  • Systems Managemnet Pipline: IBM Promotes Rational/Tivoli Bridge To Link App Dev, Operations, Business
  • AND THE LIST GOES ON….

I found the article at Computer World: IBM Unveils Tools to Link Rational, Tivoli Software to be the most interesting in terms of who and where the software is being used. Here is an excerpt:

Joshua Barnes, a consultant at Ajilon Consulting, is working with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida in Jacksonville on a three-year project to roll out Rational’s testing and requirements management tools to the health care organization’s 1,500-member IT shop.

The Problem Resolution Toolkit will help Blue Cross address problems with transactions more quickly, he said.

“You will be able to go from weeks to re-create a development environment for a transaction that has a problem to hours,” he said. “If it was processing a claim, there are so many variables … to try to re-create and find a bottleneck would be a very lengthy process.”

Melissa Webster, an analyst at IDC, said that it makes sense for IBM to build off the existing investments its customers have made in Tivoli products and tie those directly into the development environment.

“Helping performance teams come together, collaborate and share information can really dramatically shorten the time to problem resolution and time to a fix,” she said.

People have been asking what Microsoft is doing that is similar to this. I’d like to say nothing, but thats not true. Other than Mercury Interactive (which the news articles about tout), Microsoft will probably be a player in this space. The Systems Management Pipline website points out:

Richard Warren, enterprise solutions architect for MicroLink, LLC, a Vienna, Va.-based solution provider in the Microsoft camp said IBM has much work to do in this effort.

What IBM is doing “is piecemeal compared to the Microsoft approach, ” Warren maintained. “Visual Studio 2005 will put the testing and even the performance and operations management pieces into a separate, but integrated component of the yet-to-be-released IDE. The Visual Studio 2005 Team Tester Edition is a full citizen in the development and project management Team Suite while the approach taken by IBM is decidedly add-on in both architecture and strategy,” he noted.

He said IBM’s move is valid for large, multi-platform, global enterprises but Microsoft’s plan is “more cost effective, efficient, comprehensive, and integrated by design. Absolutely, and for most enterprises, more than enough going forward–and at a faster pace than IBM with or without Rational.”

A lot of people have been asking me how much these toolkits cost. As sad as it is for me, they are currently free if you purchased the required products.

IBM Rational Application Developer costs $4,000 per user, while IBM Rational Performance Tester costs $1,500 per user. The two toolkits are free to customers who have a current maintenance agreement. — Redmond News