IBM Edge is making it very clear that the IT giant is angling for big data, but that’s not the only thing that ended up on the drawing board. This week Big Blue introduced several new DevOps tools, some as-a-service, looking to attract enterprise clients by facilitating better collaboration between frontend and backend engineers.

The company debuted the latest release of its Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM)software, a suite of offerings that addresses synchronization in IT. It’s built on Jazz and is natively integrated with Rational Requirements Composer, Rational Team Concert, and Rational Quality Manager.

On top of this, a number of services are rolling out to supplement this functionality in the cloud. The IBM Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management is a virtual development and testing environment powered by the SmartCloud IaaS, and is only one of several similar offerings.  SmartCloud Application Services in turn is an entire set of solutions focused on coordinating different departments and processed, and SmartCloud for Government Development and Test is an ultra-secure version of the former.

Another SaaS is Continuous Delivery, a sandbox for app optimization that is joined by the also new Application Performance Management software.

Last but not least, the mobile version of CLM has been upgraded to facilitate sharing capabilities similar to that of the other new additions to IBM’s portfolio. The fragmented nature of this market and the multitude of devices translates into even more hassle than usual, and the vendor has spotted the opportunity.

“Today’s business dilemma is how to address both the need for rapid delivery and sufficient control in the software development process,” said Dr. Kristof Kloeckner, general manager, IBM Rational. “We must balance the need for speed and agility with better governance to manage cost and quality, achieve regulatory compliance, ensure security, and have some level of financial predictability.”