developerWorks: This is a developerWorks podcast. I'm Scott Laningham. My guest is Sundeep Goel, Worldwide Channel Sales with IBM® Rational®. Sundeep works with customers, partners, and analysts to articulate and quantify the need for better solutions in the build-and-release management space. He joins us today to talk about the recent release of Rational Build Forge® Express Edition. Sundeep, thanks for doing this.

Goel: Thanks, Scott.

developerWorks: Now, I wonder if you could set us up. I always like to ask people about this when we're talking about a specific IBM technology: What is the development issue or issues that Rational Build Forge Express Edition is designed to help developers with? Because I know you want to talk about Build Forge Express Edition, but let's set them up a little bit with the problem first.

Goel: Yes, that's good to set the context a little bit. So really, Rational Build Forge is aimed at solving the problem around build-and-release automation. And what I mean by that is, what's the business process that organizations use to go from source code that lives in some kind of source code repository all the way through a consumable binary? Whether that's, you know, an application that's pushed into production, whether it's an application that burned on to a CD. You know, what's the end result of that application? There has to be some business process that governs going from the source all the way to the end of that binary. And that's really kind of the problem that we're looking to solve.

If you look at what customers have traditionally done in that space, it's been a lot of homegrown scripts, it's been a lot of manual processes. There's not ever been any commercial automation technology that's been built for that space. That's really what Rational Build Forge Express Edition is looking to do.

developerWorks: OK. Well, you know, it sounds like for some that it might imply sort of a radical overhaul of a business infrastructure. Should we take it that way? Or does it always mean that?

Goel: No. So that's also a good question. And you're right — it sounds like we're talking about kind of revamping existing business processes. That's really not the way Rational Build Forge is designed to work. Really, the way the product is built is to kind of leverage what's already in place. We know customers have already made investments around a set of technologies and tools as they're looking to run their IT organization with. Build Forge is about automating a business process, integrating with what's already there, and, therefore, it doesn't require, you know, an overhaul of your processes or the other tools that you may already have in place.

developerWorks: Now, if you don't have a solution like Rational Build Forge Express Edition in place, what does your situation look like? Or what can it look like?

Goel: So that's something that I personally kind of see a lot when I talk to customers who don't have Build Forge or something equivalent in place. You know, really what they have is years of legacy process that has built up on top of itself. So they'll have highly manual processes that require very expensive, large build engineering teams to kind of manage. They'll have a set of scripts, they'll have a set of processes, and the high-level symptom is to build a piece of software, to build a piece of code takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of time, and costs the organization a lot of money. Versus something that can really automate that process in a systematic way.

developerWorks: Yes, that makes sense. Now, does it necessarily take, I mean, months or years to implement? Is there an average? What's that like?

Goel: Yes. So that's also a great question. I mean, Build Forge is really designed to kind of build return on investment very, very quickly. So, you know, part of the way that we're able to do that is shrinking implementation time. Earlier, we talked about the fact that Build Forge doesn't require you to kind of replace a lot of the existing products and tools that you already have in place. Because we leverage what's already there, our implementations can be on the order of days and weeks, rather than months and years. And, you know, even a large implementation for us can kind of get up and live within a month.

developerWorks: Now, what about the ... and I know with Rational Build Forge, IBM has both Express and Enterprise Editions. What's the difference between those two?

Goel: So Express is really aimed at what we typically classify as small and medium organizations. You know, customers that may have highly complex problems and sort of important business problems to solve. But the size of their organization is a little bit smaller. So maybe organizations that have 50-100 developers might be a very good fit for Express Edition. Whereas, Enterprise Edition is really aimed at the largest customers that IBM supports. You know, multinationals that may have thousands of developers spread across the globe.

developerWorks: OK. Now, if someone gets into the use of Express, and their business is booming and they're growing, and suddenly they're a candidate for Enterprise Edition, can they make that move? Or is that a restart from that point?

Goel: No, no. Express Edition has been kind of purposely designed to be built on top of the same technology that Express Edition uses. So from a technology point of view, the migration is actually very natural. It's just a simple kind of licensing switch. The underlying process and technology remains constant.

developerWorks: OK. Well, Sundeep, if you could, why don't you talk a little bit more about some of the strengths of Build Forge Express Edition? I mean, for example, what stands out to you that makes it such a strong solution in this space?

Goel: So I think the No. 1 thing that stands out to me around Express is the fact that you can solve highly complex sort of build-and-release automation problems. But you can do it in a way that' doesn't require a lot of resources from an organization that's looking to utilize the technology. So I think in the small and medium business space, companies are trying to kind of aggressively build products, get products out to market, but they don't necessarily have the same number of resources that maybe a giant multinational company has.

developerWorks: Right.

Goel: So whatever solution they're looking to adopt, it needs to be very low cost to implement, it needs to be very noninvasive, they need to be able to leverage all the tooling that they already have made investments in. I think the Express Edition is very, very strong at kind of solving the problem, dealing with all the complexity, but in a very nonintrusive way.

developerWorks: Are there other specific things about the Build Forge product group in general that really stand out when you think about other offerings in this space and that really make it special to you?

Goel: I do. And I think the biggest difference is sort of a business return on investment. From a technology point of view, there's a lot of products out there in this space that make similar sorts of statements.

When you actually drill down and look at the return that Rational Build Forge provides around developer automation, build engineering automation, early quality assurance, visibility to project management around the health of the overall application development life cycle. The value that the platform provides across kind of all the stakeholders up and down the software life cycle chain — you know, typically leads to return on investment within six to nine months, which in my experience in enterprise software, is almost unheard of. I mean, most people are used to long implementation cycles and a long time to actually see return on the investment. Build Forge is one of those products that can be screwed in and start driving value from in a very short amount of time.

developerWorks: That's great. Now, what about if someone isn't using other Rational products? Is that an issue? Can they still use Express?

Goel: Yes. That's one of the misperceptions that's sometimes out there. That to utilize Build Forge, you need to have Rational ClearCase®, you need to have Rational ClearQuest®, you need to have some of the other IBM testing tooling. That's actually not the case.

Certainly, Build Forge works very well and has tight integrations with some of the other IBM technologies, but the platform has from the beginning been designed to be an open platform. We know that customers are going to have a mixed environment. They're going to probably have some IBM tools, but they're also going to probably have some open source tools. They're probably also going to have some competitive tools out there. So to really automate the build-and-release process, to do it in a credible way, we're going to need to be able to be open. We're going to be able to need to work with a variety of systems — not just the IBM systems. And I think, you know, most of our customers are utilizing Build Forge in that mixed environment.

developerWorks: Sounds great. Any closing thoughts? Summary thoughts you want to share?

Goel: Well, so I guess my No. 1 closing thought is, I personally am very excited about Build Forge Express Edition because I think that for the first time, we can offer the Rational Build Forge technology in a package that's consumable by small and medium-size companies. I think prior editions of the technology were very strong offerings, but from a pricing and packaging point of view, was really aimed at, you know, multinationals — giant companies.

I think today, we've been able to figure out a way to package the technology in a way that small organizations who have similar problems, but maybe not quite as many resources to implement the technology, can actually derive value and start solving some of these build-and-release automation problems.

developerWorks: Sundeep Goel, Worldwide Channel Sales with IBM Rational, giving us a look today at Rational Build Forge Express Edition. Sundeep, thanks for your time today.

Goel: Thank you for having me, Scott.

developerWorks: Find out more on this topic through helpful links in the show notes for this podcast. You can access that at ibm.com/developerwork/podcast. That's all for this time. For developerWorks, I'm Scott Laningham. Thanks for listening.

Resources

• Rational Build Forge Express Edition
  
  
• Rational Build Forge on developerWorks
  
  
• Podcast blog
  
  

About the author

Scott Laningham, host of developerWorks podcasts, was previously editor of developerWorks newsletters. Prior to IBM, he was an award-winning reporter and director for news programming featured on Public Radio International, a freelance writer for the American Communications Foundation and CBS Radio, and a songwriter/musician.

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