Mainsoft links Jazz with SharePoint

Mainsoft has released a tool to link users of IBM's Jazz platform for ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) to users of Microsoft's SharePoint platform.

The Mainsoft Document Collaboration for Rational Jazz, Microsoft SharePoint Edition, which has been released in beta, allows users of the IBM Rational Team Concert collaboration portal for distributed software development teams to access and publish documents on Microsoft SharePoint sites. The Mainsoft product also integrates with business workflows based on SharePoint document management infrastructure. Rational Team Concert is part of IBM's Jazz initiative for collaborative ALM.

With the Mainsoft software, developers will see team assets in development, including SharePoint documentation. Meanwhile, persons who are not using an IDE but who access SharePoint - for example, those in marketing - can be made part of the ALM process, according to Mainsoft.

"The idea is to connect to the Jazz development environment" and connect existing enterprise assets and SharePoint content and document libraries, said Philippe Cohen, Mainsoft vice president of products and solutions.

Mainsoft's product connects with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services.

The beta release enables:

• Navigation of SharePoint sites
• Publishing of SharePoint documents
• Subscriptions to SharePoint RSS feeds
• Integration with SharePoint document workflows

Future plans call for integrating SharePoint to other Jazz products such as IBM Rational Quality Manager, Cohen said.

The general release of Mainsoft Document Collaboration for Rational Jazz, Microsoft SharePoint Edition, is due in the first quarter of 2009. It also will support the IBM Lotus Quickr Web 2.0 collaboration platform, Mainsoft representatives said.

Instructions on accessing the beta can be found in a blog on the jazz.net Web site.