This may be a big year for the IBM Rational group. On a macro level, the market is adapting to a new app culture. Tens of thousands of people have taken up coding. It’s a sign that the “second economy,” has slowly moved into the mainstream, providing a ripe opportunity for services organizations to help customers develop apps that they deploy for internal and external purposes.

IBM seems to get this new developer fueled culture and why it has to do as much to work with its customers to buil their own intellectual property and services platforms.

IBM’s acquisition of Green Hat yesterday is testament to this shift. The acquisition will deepen the IBM Rational groups’ quality assurance capabilities and give it the capability to shift more business from back end development to the front end with integration services bridging the two.

IBM, Microsoft and HP are all competing for this new surge in demand for application lifecycle management capabilities.

The IBM acquisition means IBM can extend the ALM loop to include cloud-based applications, said Mik Kersten, CEO and Founder of Tasktop Technologies. Kersten is also the lead for Eclipse Mylyn, the open-source, task-focused interface for application development that is built on Eclipse itself.

Kersten sees ALM tools interconnecting around such efforts as Open Services Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC), which Tasktop has integrated into Tasktop 2.0. OSLC is “a community of software developers and organizations that is working to standardize the way that software lifecycle tools can share data (for example, requirements, defects, test cases, plans, or code) with one another.”

Here Kersten gives an overview in an IBM video for how OSLC integrates with ALM tools by using open APIs.

Organizations need help building more robust app cultures. They need processes to connect back-end and front-end systems. As more developers enter the process, the risk factor increases. More developers using different tools across multiple geographies creates a certain disruption in the ALM stack. Atlassian’s JIRA platform, for example, needs to interconnect with traditional ALM suites. That opens some interesting opportunities to create internal platforms that companies may use to create their own application services.

It also opens a new market for ALM services. Companies like New Relic represent a this new generation of service provider.Traditional vendors like Microsoft with its Team Foundation Server are also plying in this space.

ALM and traditional services are a natural fit. IBM recognizes that. Expect a bigger push from IBM this year for services related to its Jazz platform. The same should be expected from HP, Microsoft, Oracle and the solutions providers hooking these tools together.

But the real opportunity is something quite different. If OSLC does get traction then we can expect service providers to build platforms with their core ALM stack that work with other tool suites through REST-based APIs. Buulding these infrasructures will require a new services infrastructure that I am sure IBM and others will happily make the effort to develop for their customers.

Kersten maintains that ALM has a lack of open protocols which makes it difficult to connect modern apps with ALM suites. It’s unlike email which has Exchange and IMAP. ALM should also have its own protocols that fits with its own unique architecture.

As a stack, ALM tools should have methods for linking and synchronization. It needs an open-source glue. That’s the importance of Open Services Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC), which Tasktop has integrated into Tasktop 2.0. OSLC is “a community of software developers and organizations that is working to standardize the way that software lifecycle tools can share data (for example, requirements, defects, test cases, plans, or code) with one another.”

Here Kersten gives an overview in an IBM video for how OSLC integrates with ALM tools by using open APIs.

In 2012, we will keep eeing thois major shift in the app dev platform -with more apps – comingup in oubvlicly hosed in Paas environments – thius creates a sidtiption in the Lm stack – it is not just running in the faaa center wih qm and change management tools

this move by ibm of acquting green hat sh=exgends the almloop to include cloud-based applications.

that opens a services play – we are going to see alm services –

comanies like new relic – providing what wer taditional alm tols as cloud hosted services.

microsoft – team foundation services – team foundation server – hosted alm – this is even more interesting. one component. incorporated into inm porolio – bolting on alm services