To meet these needs, organizations are evolving their business to become more: 

• Responsive to dynamic changes in demand, supply, pricing, and competitive structure
• Adaptive to variable cost structures, with scalable business processes
• Focused on core competencies that create and maintain competitive advantage
• Resilient to threats ranging from hackers to hurricanes, with consistent availability and security.

Welcome to the On Demand era. This new wave of enterprise transformation requires tight integration of applications and businesses processes, collaborative relationships with distributors, customers, and business partners – and an enhanced emphasis on software development. 

Software development: Enabling the agile enterprise
The numerous activities and business processes that keep an organization running smoothly are automated through a complex web of interdependent software systems. This system ecosystem is composed of three types of software:

• New development projects designed and built in-house;
• Legacy systems deployed to production environments; and
• Packaged software, including complex, highly configurable Customer Relationship Management and Enterprise Resource Management systems.

While new software projects are most commonly associated with software development activities, all three types of projects require software development expertise. Whether organizations expose a legacy component as a Web service, extend the functionality of a packaged application, or develop a new system utility, they need to gather requirements, scope deliverables, manage change requests, track defects, and verify quality. Sound software development practices apply equally across the entire spectrum of the software ecosystem. 
Increasingly, organizations are recognizing the central role of the software development organization in integrating and leveraging all of an organization?s software assets. Custom software development -- whether applied to a packaged application, legacy system, or a new development project -- provides the critical differentiation required to focus core competencies and drive business value throughout the enterprise. 

Rational: The software development platform for an on demand world
Rational software from IBM helps organizations create business value by improving their software development capability. Software development competency is essential to build and evolve the software ecosystem that powers an on demand world: applications that create strategic advantage, adapt quickly to changing business needs, and provide high levels of reliability and scalability. 
To achieve this end, Rational?s integrated software engineering best practices, tools, and services provide a complete foundation for successful software development. This platform fundamentally improves the way organizations build software. It encourages teams to: 

• Adopt iterative development practices that reduce project risk.
• Focus on architecture, to develop more resilient systems that adapt more quickly to changing business needs.
• Effectively manage change and protect critical strategic assets. 

The result: a more proficient software development organization, and a more responsive, resilient, and focused business that can thrive in the on demand era. 
The Rational solution combines software engineering best practices, market-leading tools, and professional services. It?s the combination of all three that drives continuous improvement in team capability. 

Contact
Rational Offices
Rational Software
18880 Homestead Rd. 
Cupertino, CA 95014