Eclipse explained

What's Eclipse?

On November 7th 2001 the Source Code for the Eclipse-Platform and the JDT-Project (Java Development Tools) - worth 40 million dollars - was published by IBM. The development of the project was passed over to the Non-Profit Eclipse Organization. IBM had a vision of software development in a community style - but what actually happened has beaten all expectations by far. Eclipse evolved from an exclusive Java-IDE to an all-embracing tool- and application platform. And it became the fastest, most efficient and best of all existing models for collaborative software development. Nowadays almost all important IT-companies use Eclipse as a strategy to establish relations and to use modern technologies jointly.

The advantages

The slick platform of Eclipse allows the creation of own tools and the flexible integration of tools from different vendors. Tools and code can be re-used. Eclipse Software meets the highest quality standards. All the latest innovations in software development are addressed by Eclipse-products because all important players are members of Eclipse. Eclipse has more functionality and is more powerful than any closed-source product and it promises a high return of investment. Through the plugin-concept, components can easily be stacked together for the production of software.

The Organization of Eclipse

152 major IT companies and more than two million developers use Eclipse day by day. Companies develop their projects and save development costs. Right now there are 66 projects producing millions of downloads. The development process "the eclipse way" is transparent and extremely reliable. The development of the comprehensive code libraries takes places in distributed teams, which are maintaining the releases and they are very reliable when it comes to meeting the release schedule. Eclipse is strategically led by the Board of Directors of the Eclipse Foundation. The members of the board get elected accordingly to the relevance of their contributions. Innoopract is represented on the Board.

Changes of the IT-industry through Eclipse

For example aircraft construction has changed, where the classic approach of software development can't achieve the requirements anymore. An aircraft is packed with computers and should run up to 30 years. Hard- and software must be maintained over this period, and adapted and adjusted to new specifications. No individual manufacturer can provide support for such a long time. For that reason Airbus are producing their entire electronics based on open source and Eclipse.

Challenges resulting from the adoption of Eclipse in companies

Strategic- Open Source is about different business models and privities of contracts compared to the classical software production. Eclipse has become a very big movement, which soemtimes makes an initial orientation difficult. We will be glad to give you advise on all the challenges you will meet while putting the possibilities of Eclipse into effect in your company.

Technical - The technical challenges of the adoption of Eclipse arises from the tremendous number of available plugins. These extensions depends on their functionality. New implementations, updates etc. can affect the functionality of your company's platform. Besides, the modular approach of Eclipse is making it hard to introduce standardized workplaces. We offer solutions addressing these challenges.

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