IBM Lotus Platform Strategy

Lots of people know about IBM’s commitment to Eclipse but the awareness is typically of IBM Rational developer tools. What I find intriguing is the rising prominence of Eclipse in the Lotus division.

It is pretty clear to me that IBM Lotus is executing on a platform strategy that spans Lotus Notes, Sametime and their new Symphony product line. At the heart of this strategy is Eclipse RCP.

The nice thing to see is that Lotus seems to really be benefiting from a common integration platform based on Eclipse. For instance,

• In this article, that compares Sametime and MS OCS the highlights for Sametime discuss the advantages of a platform strategy that is extensible and cross-platform.

Eclipse’s open software strategy allows IBM Lotus customers to easily extend or embed unified communications capabilities within their line-of-business applications, over a number of different operating systems. It also allows them to employ third-party, value-add products as part of the solution.

• At the recent Lotusphere, Lotus announced support for Ubuntu and RHEL. The quote from Canonical reflects something I believe is true for all Linux desktops; Eclipse allows Lotus and any ISVs to create a very powerful cross-platform rich-client applications.

From a technical viewpoint, we are impressed how Lotus leverages the Eclipse platform to build and deliver rich client applications. This is an exciting development for Ubuntu users, too.”

• Finally, Lotus Symphony, IBM’s alternative to MS Office based on OpenOffice and Eclipse RCP, is starting down a strategy to allow developers to create plugins for Symphony, all based on the Eclipse plug-in model.

Eclipse as a tools integration platform has been without a doubt very successful. It would now appear that Lotus is building another integration platform for desktop applications. It will be fascinating to watch the success.

The great thing for the Eclipse community is that Eclipse RCP is now installed on millions of desktops. What a great opportunity for Eclipse plug-in developers.

Eclipse and Josh in Antarctica

Josh Reed made it to Antarctica and sent me a picture of his new Eclipse sweater. It is keeping in warm, while sleeping out in -40 degree weather!

Josh is keeping a blog about his experiences in Antarctica. It seems like he might be the first Eclipse user at the South Pole and even using the Eclipse update manger to push out new releases.

btw, I’ve always wanted to go to Antarctica, so I find it interesting to read his blog.

Two Eclipse Webinars: RCP and Mylar

Next week we are organizing two webinars.

The first will be Mik Kersten, project leader of Mylar, introducing the concepts of the task oriented UI that Mylar adds to Eclipse. This is pretty cool stuff and a great example of the innovation that is happening at Eclipse. If you are interested in attending, the webinar is October 25, go here for registration info.

The second webinar, is Wayne Beaton doing an in-depth RCP demo. The idea is to basically do a code walk-thru of an RCP application. The intention is to help introduce the concepts of an RCP application to those people that are considering using it. This webinar will be held October 26, you can go here to register.

We are actually going to do a series of RCP webinars this Fall. The nice thing is that they are being sponsored by IBM, Instantiations and Palamida. It is great to have their support!

Eclipse RCP Heading to Antarctica

There is really a lot of cool things that are being developed on Eclipse RCP. Case in point, Josh Reed sent me an e-mail about his RCP based application called PSICAT, graphical editing software for stratigraphic columns and visual core description diagrams. Basically, this is what geologists use to describe drill cores. However, the really cool thing is that PSICAT is going to be used in Antarctica as part of the Antarctic Geologic Drilling Project.

I am pretty sure Eclipse is now being use on all the continents.
Neat to see that Josh is using RCP on the Mac.

Josh is actually heading to Antarctica on Monday, so we have sent him an Eclipse fleece to keep him warm.

Case Studies: Using Eclipse RCP for enterprise applications

We have just released 3 more Eclipse RCP Case studies.

The highlight is JP Morgan’s use of Eclipse RCP to build an internal platform for creating banking applications. More than just creating individual desktop applications, they are using RCP to create an generalize platform that all new custom applications can reuse and extend. I really see this as the future for RCP and software development in general. JP Morgan seems to be leading the way.

Not to be overshadow, we also have two other case studies from Nulogy and RPC Software. Nulogy is an ISV that is creating Distribution and Logistics platform for consumer package goods companies. Organization, like Unilver, are using Nulogy’s Eclipse RCP based product to help with their logistics management.

RPC Software is another ISV that has an ERP system for furniture distributors. They are able to use the extensibility of Eclipse RCP to deliver customized versions of their applications in a very cost efficient manner.

It is really exciting to hear how RCP is being used to build and deploy real enterprise applications. I am thankful to the individuals from JP Morgan, Nulogy and RPC Software that shared their stories for these case studies.

btw, I am always looking for other examples that can be used as RCP case studies. If you have deployed a RCP application and you think it would make an interested case study, please send me an e-mail to ian at eclipse dot org.