SANTA CRUZ, Ca. May 25, 2011 – IBM's Rational tool suite ranked highest in Evans Data’s annual User’s Choice Software Development Platform survey, a competitive user satisfaction survey of over 1200 developers conducted in April. Rational was rated as the best in six different categories, including application modeling, requirements management, support for remote development, support for frameworks, support for multiple languages, and quality of tech support. It also generated the best overall score and topped eight other major competitors.

Microsoft’s Visual Studio was second and Zend Studio by Zend was third. Visual Studio ranked highest in database integration, visual and declarative support, and size and quality of the community, while Zend Studio was first in web design and development tools, and availability of third party tools.

"Providing developers with a superior development environment and tools is an essential strategic element of technology adoption and directly correlates to the eventual success of platforms and vendors," said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data Corp. "With Rational, IBM has set the bar very high and continues to raise it as the product line evolves and grows to meet changing demands in the marketplace."

The survey, conducted worldwide, asked developers to identify any of the nine top development platforms that they use and then rate eighteen elements of those specific platforms. A formula was then applied to discover relative rankings across competitors. Others in the survey included JDeveloper, Eclipse, JBoss, MyEclipse, Flash Builder and Delphi.

The User's Choice series is conducted several times a year and provides competitive user satisfaction scores on technologies such as application servers, software configuration management tools, databases, and developer programs.

Evans Data Corporation provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans' syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects.

Copyright 2011 Evans Data Corporation. All other company names, products and services mentioned in this document are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.

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