What sets Jazz apart Imagine you are part of global team of developers with offices inmultiple countries spanning several time zones. Or you are part of asmall, local team divided by differing work schedules or departmentaffiliations. In either case, you collaborate with business analysts,architects, developers, testers, lawyers, business stakeholders andother subject matter experts separated by time, distance ororganization. What type of infrastructure would help you do your bestwork, both individually and as a team? The Jazz technology platform isdesigned to answer these needs. Products built on the Jazz platformwill help team members to: [list][*][b] Collaborate in context.[/b] Jazz technology tracks and manages therelationships between artifacts, promotes sound development processes,and gathers project information automatically and unobtrusively todeliver unprecedented lifecycle integration.[*][b] Right-size governance.[/b] The Jazz platform empowers teams tocapture, share and automate best practices at varying degrees of rigor.You can easily fine-tune your governance process over time—avoiding theneed to define everything up front. You can also vary processflexibility over the lifespan of a project to promote early-stageexperimentation and late-stage stabilization. Built-in processawareness and automation makes it easy for both individuals and teamsto “do the right thing” and “do things right”.[*][b] Deliver day-one productivity.[/b] Jazz platform has been designed tofacilitate straightforward set up and dynamic provisioning of new teammembers and projects. Once teams and projects are set up, you caneasily plan iterations, balance work loads, and dynamically modify theteam’s collective workstream. This streamlined onboarding providesorganizations with the flexibility they need to respond more quickly tobusiness needs and leverage business and technical talent wherever itis located.[*][b] Choose your own path.[/b] Jazz technology is built on open Web andOSGi standards. Its open and extensible architecture is designed togive you the flexibility to assemble your own software deliveryplatform, relying on your preferred vendors and solutions. Jazz isarchitected to enable a broad range of clients. Jazz has an openmiddleware interface, which means you will be able to installJazz-based products using open source middleware, such as Tomcat,Derby, and Jabber; commercial middleware from IBM WebSphere, DB2 andLotus; or even third-party products from vendors such as Oracle..[/list][b] New! Rational Quality Manager[/b] [url=http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/rqm/IBM] Rational Quality Manager[/url] is a web-based centralized test management environment for business,system and IT decision makers and quality professionals. It provides acollaborative and customizable solution for test planning, workflowcontrol, tracking and metrics reporting capable of quantifying howproject decisions and deliverables impact and align with businessobjectives. [b] New! Rational Requirements Composer[/b] [url=http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/announce/rrcIBM] Rational Requirements Composer[/url] is a requirements definition solution that enables organizations toenhance their requirements processes with easy-to-use elicitation anddefinition capabilities. Providing various visual and collaborativetools, Requirements Composer enables the capture and refinement ofbusiness needs into unambiguous requirements that drive improvedquality, speed, and alignment across the IT Lifecycle. This ability tovisualize results before committing resources helps avoid costlyrequirements failures and project rework. [b] Newly enhanced! IBM Rational Team Concert [/b] [url=http://www.ibm.com/rational/rtc/Now] available in Express-C, Express and Standard editions,[/url][url=http://www.ibm.com/rational/rtc/Rational] Team Concert[/url] includes integrated work item, source control and build managementsupport in addition to the team unifying capabilities of the Jazzenvironment. It provides a flexible, collaborative software developmentenvironment for developers, architects and project managers. Rational Team Concert makes it easy to exchange information directlyin the context of the work you are doing. For example, if anenhancement request were changed, you and other team members wouldautomatically be notified of the change. You could easily reference thechange in chat sessions—pointing to the exact artifact. And businessstakeholders could be informed automatically of status on changes theycare about. Rational Team Concert Standard is available with out-of-the-boxintegrations that enable interoperability with Rational ClearCase,ClearQuest, Build Forge and Subversion change management products.These are designed to expand your flexibility and enable efficientsmall team experimentation within a broader enterprise environment. [b] Join the Jazz jam session[/b] The Jazz technology platform is being developed using a new approachcalled open commercial software development. Unlike traditionalcommercial processes where customers have little visibility into a newproduct or release until it is shipped, Jazz development takes placeopenly at [url=http://www.ibm.com/software/info/offsitelink.jsp?URL=http://www.jazz.net/jazz.net[/url.You] can see the development as it progresses and download builds asthey are available. The benefit of this transparency is that it allowsyou and other customers to become part of a continuous feedback loopthat drives development decisions. By providing your feedback early andoften, you can influence release direction and priorities before thesedecisions are locked down. To participate in the development of Jazz and Rational Team Concert or to download the betas of Jazz products please visit [url=http://www.ibm.com/software/info/offsitelink.jsp?URL=http://www.jazz.net/jazz.net[/url]].