Over at eWeek, Darryl K Taft sits down with Catalyst Systems CEO Tracy Ragan, for her thoughts on competing with open source and Eclipse.

“The impact of open source on the build environment business has been huge. Over the past 11 years, our only competition has been with open-source solutions such as Gnu Make and Ant. It has only been in the last few years that IT organizations have begun to look more seriously at the build process. When they look closely, they begin to recognize the extraordinary hidden cost associated with ad hoc scripts written in these many open-source scripting languages,” Tracy says.

Similar to SCM (Software Configuration Management) tools evolving from RCS (Revision Control System, an open-source tool), Tracy says the build process is evolving from its open-source lineage.

Tracy also revealed that Eclipse is the place to be for Catalyst. Openmake, Catalyst’s build management tool, supports a variety of compilers, from the mainframe to windows. “When Eclipse came along we were very interested in participating because we saw the advantages of having a standardized IDE. Now we support Eclipse and Microsoft with the few others having moved over to the Eclipse platform.”

“Because we integrate with IDEs at the project level, having an IDE standard has saved us from many point-to-point integrations. We are hopeful that the Eclipse ALF project will have a similar consequence,” Tracy adds.

Tracy also talks about women in executive ranks in tech companies