IBM and Microsoft Corp."s fight for development environment supremacy is heating up about as fast as the onset of summer, with both sides digging in for a showdown, although IBM appears willing to make a concession.
At its IBM Rational Software Development Conference in the searing heat of Las Vegas last week, IBM ratcheted up its battle cry a notch by introducing new technology to help the Armonk, N.Y., systems giant integrate its solutions for business, application development and IT operations, something Microsoft has been trying to do and is expecting to deliver with Visual Studio 2005 and the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative.