InformationWeek

September 20, 1999

DeveloperWorks Web Site Signals Sea Change At IBM

Site offers a peek at new technology

By James E. Gaskin

ree for the downloading: 360,000-plus Java code samples; 160,000 Extensible Markup Language code samples, and enough white papers and reference material to wear out a new printer. Although it's still in beta mode, IBM's developerWorks Web site at www.ibm.com/developer has all this and more.

Shocking to IT personnel who remember when IBM representatives would rather eat glass than give up a single line of source code, the site brings IBM in line with competitors-and signals a new understanding of the application development environment. Managers at developerWorks will put pressure on the 120,000 developers inside IBM to post source code and new programs regularly and give the outside world a peek at its technology. "We want this site to be a resource for developers for open E-business applications based on open solutions," says Gina Poole, director of developerWorks and alphaWorks, another site for information about new technology. There is an ulterior motive, of course: IBM wants to find new development partners and the site is one of IBM's new tools to help convince developers of the company's willingness to help.

For almost two years, alphaWorks has given developers early access to more than 20 technologies that have become all or part of such products as the XML Parser, and much of the code for WebSphere. Now alphaWorks will be folded into the developerWorks site.

DeveloperWorks was launched in early June with no organized marketing campaign-and by the end of the month, it had received more than 3.5 million page views. Plans for the official fall rollout include plenty of marketing noise to drive developers and IT management personnel to the site.

Also available will be some of the results from IBM's $6 billion annual research and development efforts. For example, researchers in the Almaden, Calif., lab developed jCentral and xCentral-specialized Web crawlers that travel IBM's intranet and the Internet looking for Java and XML code. When interesting code samples are found, the software Web-bots scan the code, determine any copyright or ownership problems, and make a copy for the IBM database and index. A summary of each code sample, created by the Web-bots, accompanies each entry. Development for jCentral and xCentral resulted in 50 patents for the IBM research team.

Developers may search the code collections through the main developerWorks Web page in the Search text field. Power search options and ways to refine results are included. Java resources available through developerWorks include more than 30,000 applets, 200 beans, 80,000 source-code segments, and 280,000 newsgroup articles.

Mikael Hansson, a systems-integration specialist for CGI Group of Montreal, was invited to the developerWorks site early in the development phase. "Reading white papers and other content helps start you thinking and gives new insight and ideas for consulting in systems integration," he says. Some material on the site is free forever. Other trials are time- or feature-limited, and developers are encouraged to give feedback on products.

To maintain impartial content, IBM hired a journalist to maintain the site, which is broken into zones or specialty areas. In July, three more zones appeared: Linux, Web architecture, and Unicode. These joined the existing Java technology, Security, and XML sections. To its credit, IBM technology isn't favored over others. At similar sites run by Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, self-promotion is more obvious.

The Linux section recently included on-the-scene reports from LinuxWorld Expo, along with headlines from major online news services. An exclusive interview with one of the open-source pioneers is tagged a developerWorks exclusive. IBM had a small, tasteful download box for the preview edition of VisualAge for Java on the Linux platform. Despite disagreements with Sun over diverging goals for Java, the Java education page offers 13 online courses.

Hardware supporting the developerWorks site is all from IBM, of course. Plans include adding Linux servers during the next few months. A core team of 30 is dedicated to this project, but part of their job is to cajole other IBMers into providing content. "We have to reach out to the developer community, so they see IBM as relevant," says Chris Bahr, program director for developerWorks and alphaWorks.

Sun Labs, the R&D arm of Sun, offers www.sunlabs.com, but the focus is limited by its push of Java.

Microsoft does the best job of courting developers, migrating content distribution from a CD-ROM model in its early Microsoft Developer Network to a Web-centric model today. More than 350,000 pages of material on the Microsoft site dwarfs the content levels at IBM and Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft has registered more than 1.8 million visitors-many of whom still pay a premium for special content. The site is Windows-centric, but Microsoft does know what IBM is just learning-how to appeal to developers.

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