IBM Japan, Ltd. (president: Takuma Otoshi) which provides customers with IBM IT know-how, products, and services to support innovative product development as part of its "R&D innovation service",has begun cooperation with software tool companies to increase the productivity of embedded software development.

The first companies with which IBM is collaborating include ILC Corporation (head office: Hiroshima Ichiminami Ku, Representative Director: Eisaku Onishi), and ENCIRQ Corporation (Japan office: Tokyo, Shinagawa Ku, Representative Director: Isao Yumoto).

These days more and more products like mobile phones, televisions, consumer electronics, home appliances, industrial, medical, and office equipment, and car navigation systems incorporate IT functions. Until now production technology, embedded software and hardware platforms, and the adoption of open standards were sufficient, but in this new environment innovation is required to develop flexible, reusable architectures, efficient designs, and development techniques to create differentiated products. IBM offers the services that support customer innovation.

This announcement addresses a topic of discussion among all equipment manufacturers, how to design and develop scalable, complex embedded software when design, development, and maintenance is becoming increasingly difficult. IBM's outsource development and maintenance services are powerful aids that help improve the quality and time to market of our customers?products.

The solutions offered by the two companies in this announcement work like IBM's other products and tools in the IBM Rational tool group where, for example, our User Interface Designer and Programmer link to our User Interface Framework ("Usser Experience Developer" to simplify and support the embedded software development process with tools, analysis, design, and test functions to improve embedded software development QCD (Quality, Cost and Delivery).

- ILC GENWARE 2 :
Is a GUI (graphical user interface) development tool which allows the developer to arrange the various GUI functions on the development screen making user interface development quick and easy.

- ENCIRQ Corporation ENCIRQ Data Foundation Framework :
Is a data management system that simplifies the development of complex embedded products, with improved efficiency, reliability and performance. @