IBM and Telelogic have announced a cash offer to purchase Telelogic AB, current owner of [former]ly Popkin] Systems Architect:
Popkin’s software, System Architect, is used for modeling enterprise systems, IT infrastructures or indeed an entire enterprise’s business processes. Though it supports unified modeling language (UML) - which is also the developers’ modeling standard adopted by Telelogic and competitors that include IBM/Rational, Borland, Compuware, Oracle and others - its software is aimed more at business users than applications developers.
Popkin’s software is said to be adopted primarily by business users, who use System Architect to map out their business processes, in order that they might audit, manage and streamline them.
If this sale goes through, this could lead to a signficant change in the types of systems development methods that work with UML and Rational. While the Telelogic suite of modeling and applications development tools already supports multiple rows and columns of the Zachman Framwork, IBM's Rational suite of products have primarily focused on only the last two rows of coding and implementing. If IBM does what it should do and properly integrates (not just interfaces) Systems Architect and the Rational suite, development teams may now have the set of mature IBM-owned tools to complete analysis, design, and testing deliverables.
Another perk of this acquisition may be that more-local support will be provided. Telelogic is located in Sweden and many of our customers in North America have struggled with getting timely support to urgent issues due to the time difference.
The downside, as I see it, is that the ongoing consolidation of modeling tool ownership is going to lead to fewer tool options for modelers.
Either way, I believe that if IBM steps up and re-architects the Rational Suite to support true model-driven, full Zachman row and column integration with their products, organizations will benefit a great deal from this significant change to what have been developer techie-only coding tools that have diagramming front ends.
InfoAdvisors is an IBM and Telelogic partner.