During its EclipseCon conference, which starts today in Santa Clara, Calif., officials of the open-source community are expected to provide further information on the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Project under development by several of its members.

The Eclipse ALM system promises to tie together development tools from multiple vendors without requiring point-to-point integration.

Eclipse is targeting users like Loren Larsen, chief architect at World Wide Packets Inc. in Spokane Valley, Wash.

Larsen said he would be interested in using Eclipse's ALM project to help his company avoid having to buy an integrated suite from the likes of Microsoft Corp. or IBM's Rational Software unit. Larsen said he would prefer to use best-of-breed tools for the elements in the life cycle.

"[Open-source ALM] is the only way we will get a lot of the different tool vendors to come to the table and provide a single platform everyone can use," he said.