IBM acquires Telelogic

A couple of weeks ago, I was discussing the future of modelling tools over breakfast with Danny Sabbah, General Manager of IBM Rational Software. The modelling tools market is growing fairly slowly, and Danny made it clear that Rational was looking to increase its market share substantially.

So today's announcement [note 1] that IBM is going to acquire Telelogic makes a lot of commercial sense. Telelogic has an impressive portfolio of tools, especially since its acquisition of Popkin in 2005, and it has a strong position in Requirements Management (DOORS) and Enterprise Architecture (System Architect). Popkin contributed significantly to the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), and was closely allied to John Zachman.

Telelogic's tools and methods didn't suit every user company, and in the past I have sometimes had occasion to be mildly critical of Popkin, especially from an SOA perspective. The Popkin acquisition was billed at the time as a move into SOA [note 2] but this promise was only just starting to be realised with the announcement last month of System Architect for SOA [note 3].

If IBM had wanted to buy a pure SOA modelling company, there would have been other, perhaps worthier candidates. But Telelogic is undoubtedly more attractive to IBM, because of its other assets and relationships; IBM can be relatively unconcerned by Telelogic's weaknesses, and should have little difficulty reassuring the customers of both companies.

But growth by acquisition is only one piece of Danny's strategy for IBM Rational. Another important piece is a shift in focus - from selling tools and technologies to selling process and business value. This means selling to the business, not selling to developers. Instead of being billed as a software engineering methodology, RUP may come to be positioned as an industry model for the software development industry, which IBM should be able sell in the same way it sells industry models for banking, insurance and other industries.

Modelling tool vendors have always faced the problem of growth. If the tools are good, they may get a loyal community of keen developers, but that is not quite enough. Rational itself had reached a plateau as an independent vendor before its acquisition by IBM in 2002. Is there more consolidation to come?

[Note 1] IBM to Acquire Telelogic to Advance Global Software Delivery Strategy (June 2007), IBM beats HP in bid for Telelogic (June 2007)

[Note 2] Telelogic's Popkin Purchase Prepares the Way for SOA (April 2005), Telelogic looks to bring modeling to SOA (Nov 2006)

[Note 3] Telelogic Facilitates Service Oriented Architecture Adoption (May 2007), Telelogic Adds Business Process SOA Solution (May 2007), Telelogic tools tie software services to business processes (June 2007)

Portfolio Management

Computer Associates acquires Niku, variously described as IT Governance, Business Portfolio Management, Enterprise Portfolio Management and Business Service Optimization.

Niku's main product is Clarity, described as "a project and portfolio management solution that provides comprehensive management of IT projects, programs and initiatives as a portfolio of projects". Some of the marketing material talks so generically about investments and assets that the product appears to be usable for managing any investments, not just IT acquisitions and developments.

The obvious comparison is IBM's acquisition of Systemcorp, which is now incorporated in the Rational product suite as Rational Portfolio Manager. Other independent tools include Planview. Presumably Clarity is being positioned as CA's offering in this space, and I look forward to seeing appropriate integration with other development tools from CA and third parties.

Portfolio management is seen as a way of connecting the business with software development, and extends the scope of the software process. Besides good tools, there is a clear need for process guidance. See for example Scott Ambler's piece on Extending the RUP with the Portfolio Management Discipline.

Much of the time, an IT portfolio is assumed to be a portfolio of (development) projects. Like an open-ended development programme, but with greater distribution of responsibility and diversity of outcome. While many of the disciplines of programme management also apply to portfolio management (including quality management and risk management), there is a greater emphasis on business investment and ROI. Some proponents of IT portfolio management (arguing from the analogy of financial portfolio theory) see it as a way of smoothing IT risk across the enterprise. See for example this IBM paper on What CIOs can learn from portfolio theory.

But of course IT isn't just about projects. IT management includes the delivery and support of services via a complex set of assets and relationships. A complete IT portfolio includes assets, contracts, services and lots of other stuff.

CA already has a separate tool (Unicenter Argis) for portfolio asset management. In the longer-term, it would make sense for CA to bring together all aspects of IT portfolio management into a single tool, to support optimization across the whole of IT.

Technorati Tags: ComputerAssociates IBM IT Portfolio Niku Rational Unicenter

Rational Conference Report 6

I'm off to the airport shortly, and I've got stacks of notes to process.

I'm pleased (but hardly surprised) to see Rational moving towards providing some of the functionality I've been talking about in some of my recent reports for CBDI.

• Architectural Discovery for the Service-Based Business (Feb 2005)
• Modelling for SOA (Jan 2005)
• Managing Services (July/August 2003)

There are also some exciting things coming up in such areas as autonomic computing and collaborative engineering, which I plan to write about soon. Bye for now ...

Technorati Tags: IBM Rational

Rational Conference Report 5

Another day, another keynote. This morning the Rational Conference provided a platform for Thomas Dolby, whose most recent contribution to civilization has been the polyphonic ringtone.

Dolby described himself as a geek, a popstar who wanted to be a software programmer. (I thought of the late Douglas Adams who once articulated a similar wish.)

Remember Sam Palmisano's aphorism "innovation occurs at the intersection of invention and insight", quoted by Grady in his keynote yesterday. In today's keynote, Dolby described himself as someone who invents in order to innovate. In other words, he has always tried to invent new tools for producing music (including building new hardware and software), which enables him to produce music that is different to what everyone else is producing. I think there are some important lessons for business computing here.

(Historical note: One of the pioneers of electronic music in the twentieth century was Karlheinz Stockhausen. In the 1950s, he painstakingly constructed sounds by hand that subsequent technologies would be able to produce in an instant. In so far as Stockhausen and others provided a "proof of concept" of electronic music, they were the true inventors of the synthesizer. See my post on Art and the Enterprise.)

Dolby also stated some regret for the fact that technology leads to a mass-produced experience, and stated a desire for interactive or context-sensitive music. This led a member of the audience to remark on the apparent contradiction - that these irritating ringtones are not interactive or context-sensitive.

But the direction of the software industry is towards software that is capable of much greater levels of user-interactivity and context-sensitivity. There is no reason in principle why my phone could not learn to adapt the ringtone to be appropriate to the context - for example ringing louder in a noisy bar and quieter in a library. Let us hope that Dolby and his associates pick up some ideas while they are here.

Rational Conference Report 4

A busy day yesterday, with lots of good conversations not just about Rational but about Tivoli and other stuff as well. But by 6pm Vegas time the jet lag had caught up with me, and I was too tired to respond when Alan Brown walked by and said hi. (Sorry Alan if you're reading this.)

This is the first time I've blogged live from an event like this, and it's interesting to hear the reaction. One IBM person thought I was being a bit negative in places. But I think my general line is that IBM is doing some exciting stuff - it's on a journey, and there's some way to go. I probably spend more time talking about the outstanding opportunities than about the achievements to date, but I don't see anything wrong with that.

Product Architecture and Brand Identity

I've been urged not to make too much of the difference between brand names. It doesn't really matter whether a product is branded as Rational or Websphere or Tivoli. Hm.

It is doubtless the case today that there are some disconnects within the software industry - notably between development and operations. So it is not surprising that these disconnects are reflected by different product/solution offerings from IBM, under different brand names. Tivoli and Rational are being marketed to different kinds of customer, addressing different kinds of problem.

But if IBM want to make a serious contribution to reducing these disconnects, it must find a way of bringing these communities together. I've been hearing about some of the cr0ss-product initiatives between the different product groups within IBM, but eventually this collaboration has got to be reflected outside IBM as well as inside.

Technorati Tags: IBM Rational Tivoli

Rational Conference Report 3

Grady Booch

My paths have nearly crossed with Grady for about twenty years. A mutual friend promised to introduce me in the mid 1980s after my first book was published. In the 1990s, my colleagues at Texas Instruments Software were working on the UML specification with Rational, while I was busy with RM/ODP (early glimmers of service-oriented computing). Since I've been an industry analyst, I've had plenty of conversations with his colleagues, but somehow never got to speak to him.

So it was a personal delight for me to finally meet him yesterday, and present him with a copy of my latest book.

Today was his big keynote. Two main themes: innovation and software engineering.

Innovation

Software is a major driving force for innovation, and IBM is a major innovator. Grady quoted an October 2003 speech by Sam Palmisano, arguing that "innovation occurs at the intersection of invention and insight", and expanded on this theme with a quick survey of IBM's innovations past, present and future.

Software Engineering

As Grady has said before, software engineering is hard. Complexity is ugly and inescapable. We deal with this by moving up levels of abstraction.

(I'd like to add two observations to this, which provide further support for Grady's argument. Firstly, it is my observation that the quantity of complexity faced by software developers remains fairly constant over time. This is because the rate at which complexity is subtracted at the lower levels is roughly matched by the rate at which complexity is added at the higher levels. Secondly, I believe that most people - whatever their role - are constantly dealing with quantities of complexity that stretch their natural abilities. Complexity expands to fill the available space.)

Grady reminded us of some of the fundamental principles of engineering.

• crisp and reliable abstractions
• separation of concerns
• balanced distribution of responsibilities

Inspired by Herb Simon and Stewart Brand, this leads us to a notion of good-enough, loosely-coupled, highly adaptive solutions, which can evolve on-demand. These software engineering principles are therefore at the core of SOA. And SOA is therefore more than just a passing fad, but a fundamental response to the demands of innovation.

Technorati Tags: complexity IBM Rational innovation SOA service-oriented

Rational Conference Report 2

Business - Development - Operations

In my previous post, I mentioned the disconnect between Business and Operations, and I've now had an opportunity to discuss this with a few other people.

IBM's solution for connecting Operations with Business involves Tivoli and/or WBI Monitor. (I talked about IBM's closed loop solution in a CBDI report some time ago.) There doesn't seem to be a way to close the IT Governance loop within the Rational brand, and the full lifecycle is not covered by RUP. (As I understand it, the Tivoli Unified Process is currently separate from the Rational Unified Process.)

There is some potential for confusion here, because there is a many-to-many relationship between the IBM brands and the underlying technologies. So the technological footprint of "Rational" within IBM Software is not quite the same as the product marketing footprint. WBI Modeller remains outside the Rational brand. So I think we have to regard the Business-Development-Operations picture as a framework for the whole of IBM Software, not just Rational.

From this perspective, I think IBM have most of the components for a really good solution to IT Governance, but (as I am sure they will acknowedge) they haven't quite joined up the pieces yet.

Service-Oriented Architecture

I guess this is what I'm really here for. There was a great talk on "SOA for Mere Mortals" this afternoon, followed by a useful Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) session.

The BoF session included some input from an IBM customer in the banking industry that had implemented many hundreds of services. We discussed how SOA could be justified from a business perspective. There was some agreement that you had to reach a reasonable level of complexity before the advantages of SOA over previous technologies became apparent. This led to the suggestion that you had to have a reasonable level of maturity before you could manage this level of complexity.

The level of granularity is then a trade-off between a desire for flexibility (which is part of the justification for SOA) and the need to contain complexity. This is a design judgement made in a particular context, which includes such considerations as the skillset of the target consumer of the service.

User recommendation: define templates as to how you are going to define services. (There is a RAS profile for web service definitions, but this organization defined its own template.)

Technorati Tags: IBM Rational SOA service-oriented

Rational Conference Report 1

I'm at the IBM Rational User Conference in Las Vegas. It's seriously hot outside the hotel, but I've just been inside the whole morning, listening to a succession of keynote talks.

Born to run - software

The first keynote address was set up almost like a rock music event. Loud music and subdued lighting, with an occasional sweep of in-your-face spotlights. In such an environment I find it really hard to strike up a decent conversation with the guy next to me. I guess I should be accustomed to this by now, but I don't quite understand why software executives always choose to frame their appearances like this.

Besides the software executives, we had a voice group called Toxic Audio, singing a new Rationalized version of "Taking Care of Business" - and also providing choral punctuation to the extended demo.

Business-driven development

Rational presents what it has been doing in terms of a three-part triangular model - Business, Development and Operations. (I've seen this model before at the Atlantic launch.)

There are some important disconnects between these three. What I've heard this morning is mainly about two of these disconnects, and how Rational tools and processes may be used to overcome these disconnects.

• The procurement disconnect between business and development. Managing IT as a business, portfolio management, etc.
• The deployment disconnect between development and operations. Synchronizing quality and change.

However, there are some other important disconnects that they aren't talking about. In particular, there is very little mention of any disconnects between Business and Operations. I spoke to one Rational manager about this, and he thought this was because the material was largely targeted at an audience of developers.

Technorati Tags: IBM Rational

RUP/SE

IBM Rational adopts a process-led approach to software development, with the Rational Unified Process (RUP) sitting at the very centre of its intellectual property. IBM's marketing materials for the Atlantic release reassert the RUP principles.

RUP takes a project-focused view of software development. However, the On-Demand Business calls for a much broader range of software-related activities - not just software development - and not all of these fit into a traditional template. Even before the Rational acquisition, IBM already had lots of different processes for various things – and of course the acquisition of Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) brought in some more. Although there is a mechanism for plugging additional process into the basic RUP framework, this doesn't escape from the project focus of RUP.

RUP/SE is a RUP plug-in for the systems engineering domain. Systems are defined broadly, to include human activity as well as software and hardware activity – thus the whole enterprise or any part of it can be regarded as a system. RUP/SE gets away from a project focus, and gives us a solution focus instead. It supports the construction of a business solution as a system of systems, with the RUP process patterns instantiated recursively for superordinate and subordinate systems, yielding a form of twin-track development. This can be nested to as many levels as you like, yielding n-track development, with the tracks operating at completely different timescales.

Systems engineering is traditionally seen as a specialist domain within the software world, mainly aimed at building very large and complex systems in such areas as aerospace and the military. This typically calls for higher levels of complexity and rigour in the solution development process, and possibly more sophisticated tools and techniques than regular software engineering.

IBM's material on RUP/SE emphasizes its suitability for some of the traditional systems engineering problems, without mentioning SOA. But for SOA, RUP/SE appears to have a lot to offer, and here are some of the reasons why:

• SOA involves the construction of systems of systems
• SOA is not amenable to the traditional project – whether waterfall or spiral
• SOA typically requires twin-track or n-track development

My review of Rational Atlantic tools for SOA was published by the CBDI Forum in January 2005. (members link non-members link) For ongoing material on SOA, please subscribe to my SOAPbox weblog.

Independent Modelling Tools

It's an old debate.

Firstly, are you are going to do model-based software development?	I have been an strong advocate of model-based development since the early 1980s, and I wrote my first book on data modelling in 1984. For over ten years, I worked for a company (JMA Information Engineering, which became part of Texas Instruments Software) that designed and sold modelling methods and tools.
Secondly, are you going to use a proper tool?	For me, this means not just loads of stand-alone diagrams (e.g. PowerPoint) or linked diagrams with standard notations (Visio), but a repository capable of supporting several users working on a single large model, and perhaps offering several different diagrams with a common underlying semantics (e.g. IDEF, UML).
Thirdly, are you going to use the modelling tool that is integrated with the implementation platform, or an independent tool?	While I have a strongly held position on the first two questions, I do not have a strong position on the third question. I can see advantages both ways.

Independent	Integrated
Allows you to have a single modelling approach across multiple platforms. Allows you to build the model before you select the platform. Allows you to switch platform without changing the model. Allows you to use the special features of a particular modelling tool.	Simplifies coordination and change management between conceptual model and software design. Supports "round-trip" software engineering. Integrated models may also support rival platforms (although possibly with lower levels of integration).

With the latest ("Atlantic") release of the Rational product family, IBM is bringing the modelling tools closer to the platform. Meanwhile Keith Short's team at Microsoft is developing an integrated approach to modelling. (Keith was also at JMA/TI and was the architect of Integrated CASE.)

Thus market forces may be tilting the balance towards the integrated tools. Can the independent tools survive?

Some consolidation is probably inevitable, and presumably some of the other platform vendors would be interested in beefing up on the modelling front. I noted a small announcement last week from Popkin, who are getting cosy with Oracle. Is this a sign of things to come?

Popkin/Oracle announcement (December 2004)
Earlier post on Consolidation (October 2004)
Earlier post on Models and Code (July 2004)
Earlier post on Software Factories (July 2004)

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Update December 16th 2004

In a useful reply to Grady Booch (December 3rd, 2004), Jean-Jacques Dubray (December 14th, 2004) contrasts the Microsoft version of MDA with the OMG version.

Meanwhile, IBM has its own version of MDA, based on Eclipse. Although Eclipse may be supported by many vendors, it is still a platform, and the Eclipse Modelling/Management Framework (EMF) can hardly be regarded as truly platform independent.

Although EMF is currently aligned with UML, it may be able to accommodate a broad range of other modelling languages, including both older languages (IDEF) and newer ones (BPMN?). Thus third party modelling tool vendors may find themselves a niche within EMF. However, the extent to which they can be fully integrated into the software lifecyle remains unclear.

IBM - Rational - RUP

IBM is gradually bringing the software development platform together under the Rational brand. This now includes some bits of Websphere and Eclipse. We can also expect further integration between software management (ClearCase) and system management (Tivoli, Grid).

However, although most of the modelling tools are now included under the Rational brand, the Websphere BI tool (formerly Holosofx) are a notable exception. The Rational part of IBM remains committed to UML, and this will undoubtedly cause problems for groups within IBM that are closer to other modelling notations – especially BPMN.

IBM is working towards a new release of RUP. The work includes integrating some development methods used within Global Services, including the Summit method brought in with the PWC acquisition. We should therefore expect the RUP enhancements to cover some of the procurement issues to which System Integrators pay considerable attention.

The focus (at least in the short term) remains on software development and support for IT architects. This justifies the exclusion of the Websphere BI tools (and associated method), which are aimed more towards business process architects.

There is a declared interest in distributing the software development workflow. Software development increasingly represents a collaboration between different teams (e.g. architects here collaborating with developers elsewhere), sharing development knowledge and artefacts. Within IBM, the obvious place for collaboration and knowledge-sharing tools is under the Lotus brand. However, no detailed plans have yet been announced for synergies between Lotus and Rational.

RUP is therefore moving from a one-size-fits-all approach towards a framework approach. A framework approach should allow for methods and tools to be implemented in chunks, with interoperability between old and new. I shall also be keen to see interoperability between UML and non-UML, and between IBM and other vendors (especially Microsoft).

[based on briefing with IBM Rational, May 2004]