News & Events

06.01.2009    ClearBlade, Ascendant Technology (Atech), & IBM Team Up for First RTCz Sale
ClearBlade leads way in modernizing city government to EGL in first RTCz win worldwide.

A city government IT staff found itself staring headfirst at a serious dilemma - constituent and employee demand for improved access to information and legacy applications built on VAGen, which is coming to end of life in Q3 2009. IBM had positioned the value of modernizing to Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) for nearly two years at this client, before engaging ClearBlade early in 2009 to strengthen the case. ClearBlade spent three weeks on site with the city to conduct an EGL pilot that served to prove the value in selecting an IBM solution for this modernization effort.

ClearBlade CEO Eric Simone and VP of Operations Maurie James then turned a good opportunity for the city into a great one by introducing Rational Team Concert for System z. The city's stakeholders were impressed by the value RTCz brings to its software delivery team, while RTC's seamless integration with EGL made an even better opportunity for modernization. The sale represents the first ever RTCz sale worldwide.

This was a highly collaborative opportunity as ClearBlade leveraged Ascendant Technology's sales expertise to package a compelling solution. In full 'partnering with partners' collaboration, ClearBlade and Atech also engaged SHI for their procurement experience during the RFQ process to complete a compelling Rational solution. The strategic partnership between Atech and ClearBlade goes two decades back in working relationships, and today represents a go to market strategy that leverages Atech's cross-brand Portal, Commerce and SOA expertise with ClearBlade's unrivaled strength in modernizing legacy systems into modern web-based IBM platforms. With the many potential clients that need to modernize their legacy systems to keep pace in today's marketplace, Atech and ClearBlade are poised to drive IBM software and deliver expert services to ensure client satisfaction.