Company stresses business, software development unity IBM officials at the IBM Rational Software Development Conference in Las Vegas last week stressed the need to unify business and software development objectives.The disconnect between business users and software development has led to finger-pointing, according to Daniel Sabbah, general manager at IBM Rational.“We tend to treat operations as a wall over which we throw development and assets when we as developers are finished with them. We then argue incessantly over whose fault it is when they don’t work or don’t scale,” Sabbah said. A developer said he agreed with IBM’s notion that business, processes, and software development need to be unified. “That’s the only way that business knows what they need and what they’re going to get,” said John Garis, process architect for IT at The Hartford insurance company. He stated that he was not speaking on behalf of his employer.Big Blue announced several tools, including IBM Problem Resolution Toolkit for Rational Application Developer and IBM Performance Optimization Toolkit for Rational Performance Tester. These are intended to enable a faster, automated process for problem identification in business applications, and will particularly benefit companies building an SOA, IBM said. The tools gain troubleshooting capabilities from Tivoli Monitoring for Transaction Performance, which diagnose and fix transaction performance problems. The software monitors application performance and quality.The company also detailed new services in the form of IBM Standard Deployment Service for Rational Portfolio Manager, IBM Fast Track Deployment Service for Rational Portfolio Manager, and IBM Rational Project/Program Management Assessment Service. Rational Portfolio Manager provides business and development teams with a toolkit for planning and managing IT projects. IBM Software Release and Deployment Service, meanwhile, helps users to more effectively use Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest with Tivoli Configuration Manager. On the software quality tools front, IBM said that Rational Performance Tester is being fitted with functionality to improve ease-of-use and accuracy of application testing. New HTML rendering features allow users to view Web pages being tested, instead of just code.The IBM Rational Functional Tester Extension for Siebel Test Automation will enable customers deploying Siebel 7.7 applications to verify that their Siebel applications will function as intended. Another tool, Rational Performance Tester Extension for Siebel Test Automation, provides load testing capabilities for Siebel 7.7. Software Development