As part of its Power announcements, IBM introduced IBM Rational Power Appliance, a family of software appliances comprised of Power Express servers that are pre-loaded and pre-configured with IBM Rational software for AIX development. Available in a range of sizes and programming languages to suit specific user requirements, these systems provide customers a rapidly deployable software development environment.
The new IBM Rational Power Appliance is a total application development solution for IBM Power Systems. It offers two solutions: C/C++ or COBOL for AIX development, in three sizes. Both solution sets consist of a preconfigured POWER7 server with pre-installed AIX v6L operating system, Rational Team Concert for Power System Software v2.0, Rational Developer for Power System Software v7.6 (C/C++ or COBOL feature), and a choice of XL C/C++ for AIX v11.1 or COBOL for AIX v4.1 compiler.
The IBM Rational Power Appliance Express solution is intended for a small enterprise or a department (five developers) within a larger enterprise that is performing application development on AIX. The Workgroup solution is targeted at a medium enterprise or a large department within an enterprise (20 developers) that is performing application development on AIX. The Enterprise solution is for an enterprise or a large department (40 developers) within an enterprise that is performing application development on AIX. The three POWER7 servers that are the foundations for the Appliance are Power 710 Express server; Power 730 Express server; and Power 750 Express server.
"This offering essentially makes it very easy for a customer to start to do development on the applications running on their Power Systems with everything all set up and ready to go for them. It makes it far, far more convenient for them to start to develop extensions to those applications or do any kind of work in a maintenance sense around them, and makes it much more efficient for them to operate that entire stacked environment of software and hardware," Scott Searle, a Rational marketing program director, tells 5 Minute Briefing. And, Searle points out, given that IBM Rational Developer for Power Systems Software as an IDE is a modern GUI, it's the same type of environment that developers would have learned in college.
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