Development

Over the next few weeks we’ll have many first-time visitors from the IMPACT conference coming to our site, and we probably have a few long-time site users who aren’t exactly sure what the fuss over IMPACT is all about. Hope this helps…

ProjectZero started as the name of an incubator project at IBM whose goal was to deliver a radically simple development and runtime platform for dynamic web applications. The original motto was “Zero Complexity. Zero Overhead. Zero Obstacles.” One of the radical concepts (for us, anyway) was the idea of a more open and agile development process, borrowing patterns from the open-source world to enable more involvement by more people earlier in the project.

http://www.projectzero.org is the community development web site where the ProjectZero technology is being introduced. Our community interaction model brings open source-style practices to IBM’s traditional, behind-the-firewall product development. Users are invited to participate during the entire life cycle via downloads of the development drivers, discussion forums, bug reports and access to the source code. projectzero.org is an IBM-owned internet domain, and IBM developers are the code contributors.

WebSphere sMash is the commercial product that results from the ongoing technology incubation at projectzero.org. WebSphere sMash is part of the IBM WebSphere Software portfolio and available for production usage and deployment. We’ve delivered 2 versions to date: v1.0 in June 2008, and v1.1 in December 2008. WebSphere sMash DE (Developer Edition), is a freely downloadable version for use in application development and limited deployment (available from projectzero.org).

IMPACT 2009 is an IBM software conference focused on our Solution Oriented Architecture (SOA) deliverables, including those from the WebSphere family of products. IMPACT 2009 is being held in Las Vegas, NV May 3-8 and offers an exclusive opportunity to quickly gain practical knowledge about the IBM Smart SOA™ approach to help you prepare your action plan and achieve real, measurable business outcomes for your organization.

WebSphere sMash will be very active at IMPACT, with a number of sessions and several developers in attendance, and featuring conference highlights here on projectzero.org. We’re also hosting an IMPACT Agenda application at projectzero.org, built on WebSphere sMash, that lets you sift, search and sort the conference agenda in a myriad of different combinations.

IBM’s business model is built to support two principal goals: helping clients succeed in delivering business value by becoming more innovative, efficient and competitive through the use of business insight and information technology (IT) solutions; and, providing long-term value to shareholders.

The company’s global capabilities include services, software, hardware, fundamental research and financing. The broad mix of businesses and capabilities are combined to provide business insight and solutions for the company’s clients.

In addition to really, really big things like Watson, and System Z mainframes, we do some interesting things on a smaller scale, like here at projectzero.org.