IBM on Rails

About a year ago my IBM practice started doing software development using Ruby on Rails. I can happily say I’ve been Java-free for a full year and it has been quite refreshing. Even though IBM is traditionally a J2EE shop there is larger trend happening in enterprise software development where people are realizing every job doesn’t require a super-sized hammer. Agile development methodologies and lightweight open-source software allow us to spend less time struggling with the plumbing of an application and more time focused on the customer-specific business logic. Projects are finishing on time, under budget and this leads to happy customers. Rails is also making our developers excited and passionate about coding again….remember that feeling?

We are also finding new and innovative ways to deploy these projects in production environments using old school IBM mainframe technology. On my current project our Ruby on Rails code is running on Apache, clustered Mongrel and MySQL deployed on z/Linux running on IBM zSeries 990 mainframes. The customer is overjoyed we are able to leverage their enterprise infrastructure with such cutting edge technologies.