Merant Joins IBM To Launch Eclipse.org

In a move that strengthens its commitment to open development environments, Merant, the Hillsboro, Ore.-based provider of enterprise change management (ECM) technologies yesterday introduced Eclipse.org, an open community of development tools providers.

As member of the Eclipse.org board of directors and a founding partner with IBM, Merant has contributed to Eclipse.org open source technology by integrating the PVCS Enterprise Change Management suite of products to IBM’s WebSphere Studio Workbench, which is based on Eclipse.org technology.

Merant says that developers using an Eclipse.org-based environment will benefit from the flexible upgrading of development tools released by participating vendors that avoids compatibility issues among new and existing tools.

“As Eclipse.org forms, the participation from industry leaders like Merant is very important,” says Skip McGaughey, interim chairman of the Eclipse.org board of directors.

“Merant’s PVCS client workstation plug-in helps developers efficiently move to the Eclipse Platform, allowing them access to the broad range of integrated plug-in tools without interfering with their existing repository,” he continues.

Merant says its PVCS ECM solution helps to automate change across development and web environments and that the interoperability between the PVCS products and other tools compatible with the Eclipse.org platform will allow developers to assemble customized plug-and-play open development environments including an integrated ECM solution.

Developers using an Eclipse.org-based environment will benefit from flexible upgrading of development tools as released by participating vendors – without compatibility issues among new and existing tools.

Says Andrew Weiss, chief technology office for Merant: “IBM’s commitment to open source by contributing the Eclipse platform and using it as a foundation for all strategic IBM application development products is a giant step in the development of open environments.”

“Merant’s continuing support of open development environments is consistent with the strategy that has driven the PVCS product suite over the years – to empower customers to manage development in a cost-effective and simplified manner,” he says.