For über vendors like IBM and Microsoft, there has always been a huge aftermarket of third parties with offerings that typically under price or add new features faster. That’s exactly the vacuum that Eclipse tooling provider Genuitec is aiming to fill with MyEclipse 6.1 Blue Edition.

For $149, which is a fraction of the price for the full version of the comparable IBM offering, Genuitec promises a version of its existing, relatively lightweight toolset which, surprise surprise, adds support for features like Spring, Hibernate, JPA (Java Persistence API), and EJB3 that are not part of the IBM bundle. 

The back story behind release of Blue Edition is that with WebSphere 6.1, IBM is pulling the plug on WebSphere Application Developer (WSAD, an acronym that we’re surprised ever got past marketing) and forcing customers to move to Rational Application Developer. OK, we don't think that IBM did the move because the RAD acronym is a bit cheerier, but it does represent a move to rationalize (no pun intended) development tools under the Rational stack. So Genuitec figures that WebSphere 6.1 gives them opportunities because WebSphere developers are, by necessity, going to have to migrate to something.

Genuitec didn't exactly provide us a lot of details on Blue Edition except to tell us, it’s easier, it’s more current on standards, and it’s cheaper than RAD. That’s probably good enough for anyone who’s already familiar with MyEclipse.

And in fact, Blue might not necessarily be a replacement for RAD; in their words, "entrenched" WebSphere/Rational tools custom,ers might use it as a supplement for taking advantage of Spring, Hibernate et al that IBM either doesn't yet support, or doesn't support the latest version. Keep in mind that IBM tends to be slow on pick up of the latest Java technologies for a good reason: its enterprise customer base prizes stability over bleeding edge. The Genuitec tools provide such customers the chance to selectively wade into forbidden territory.

Genuitec is also further pulling the wraps of Pulse, the Eclipse plug-in update service that it first unveiled back in the fall. Pulse is intended to help tame the process of keeping your Eclipse tooling current. Given that Eclipse is an open source confederation, where hundreds of suppliers offer plug-ins, ensuring that you’re up to date on the latest versions and patches has been largely a hit or miss affair. Pulse is an Eclipse Rich Client Platform application (RCP) was designed to rationalize all that with an update service that, if you register, will check your configurations and alert you to updates, and provide a central source where for download or deployment.

As a beta 1, Pulse was pretty limited, confined to the top hundred or so Eclipse plug-ins. Whether by design or because users told them otherwise, Genuitec now plans to blow that number out to as many Eclipse plug-ins for which software update sites are available. According to Todd Williams, VP of technology, it became apparent that Eclipse developers typically mix popular and obscure plug-ins, otherwise clichéd as the long tail of marketing.

So going forward, Pulse will try traversing the landscape, harvesting current plug-ins that offer active download sites. The message they’re sending out is that Pulse may still be beta, but it's a beta that Eclipse developers can more readily rely on.

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