IBM has launched a new software platform for digitally aware and interconnected products, and is using it in its first 'Solutions Experience Lab for Systems Engineering and Embedded Software'. This is based at the IBM Innovation Centre (IIC) in Waltham, Massachusetts, with a lab to follow in Munich, Germany later this year.
The new platform comes from integrating its high level UML and SysML software design technology acquired from i-Logix and Telelogic into it's Rational product line
"While this transformation is sparking unprecedented leaps in product value, it also introduces new challenges and business implications," said Daniel Sabbah, general manager of IBM Rational Software. "The successful organisations of the future will build a strong competency in delivering that software fused with sensor and electro-mechanical technologies to create products that are increasingly intelligent, instrumented and interconnected to the Internet and other systems.”
Daimler Fleetboard, a subsidiary of Daimler AG, is using IBM Rational software used to create an end-to-end telematics system for trucks that optimises vehicle usage and routing, resulting in a 5 to 10 percent reduction in fuel consumption as well as a 10 percent savings in telecommunications costs. Automotive component maker Delphi is using IBM Rational software to help teams located all over the world work together to better develop and design products, including such innovations as the first pre-packaged airbag assembly within a steering wheel.
The platform consists of:
• IBM Rational Team Webtop, to help increase communication and productivity throughout these extended product design teams by presenting information from multiple software delivery tools across the workflow in a single Web-based view.
• IBM Rational DOORS is also being enhanced with new features that will allow teams to avoid paper-based review processes by managing the complex and multi-layered requirements of smart products and systems of systems through an easy-to-use Web interface. The new version of DOORS enables an expanded set of stakeholders to review, analyse and modify requirements data using the Web.
• IBM Rational Change and IBM Rational Synergy are being updated to help companies improve application quality by more accurately and efficiently identifying the specific stages of complex, multi-step processes used when developing smarter products.
• New features in IBM Rational Rhapsody will help customers bring products to market faster with new agile software development workflow and modeling capabilities to deliver complex systems before the software, hardware and electronics come together. This helps identify and correct potential design flaws as early as possible.
For more informatiopn, visit www.ibm.com