Free IBM/ILOG Software…

… if you are an academic.

As part of the “blue-washing” of ILOG, the academic licensing system for IBM’s OPL Studio, constraint programming system, and CPLEX has changed to become part of IBM’s Academic Initiative Program.  Here is the full announcement:

Effective February 15, 2010, IBM is offering no-charge full-version ILOG Optimization products via IBM’s Academic Initiative program (http://www.ibm.com/academicinitiative). This move builds on the availability of limited Teaching Editions available since August 2009, and now provides registered members with renewable one-year access to IBM ILOG OPL-CPLEX, CPLEX, CP Optimizer and CP for both teaching and research use. Registered members can access ILOG Optimization software at: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/university/software/get_software.html, where they can search for ILOG Optimization or individual solvers by name. Depending on the search criteria, electronic assemblies will be retrieved for IBM ILOG OPL Development Studio, CPLEX, CP Optimizer or CP on all commercially available platforms. To run the software, members will also need to download a key from: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/university/support/ilog.html, but are no longer required to install ILM. Note that as part of Academic Initiative, IBM also makes its professionally-developed training materials available for use in classrooms and labs at: https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/devtool/scholar/web/coursewarePickPage.do?source=ai-course-websphere.

I signed up for the program yesterday, and it was painless. Once I showed my inability to read simple instructions by missing the “how to download a key” section (an issue quickly and cheerfully handled by IBM), I was up and going with CPLEX. There are also some educational materials on both the CP and CPLEX side which look very well done.

One thought on “Free IBM/ILOG Software…”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *