In April 2005 Instantiations announced an exclusive relationship with IBM to extend the viable, supported product life of VisualAge Smalltalk applications. This new relationship is an integral part of the larger IBM Smalltalk Transition and Roadmap Strategy that ensures existing VisualAge Smalltalk customer business needs and requirements are met. Instantiations’ mission is to produce a new, supported version of Smalltalk that includes the VisualAge Smalltalk technology base and is 100% VisualAge compatible.

IBM and Instantiations realize that the business needs of many VisualAge Smalltalk (VAST) customers require the long term support and viability of VAST-based applications. In some cases, customers may wish to migrate their existing applications in an evolutionary way while, in other cases, it may not be feasible or economically justifiable to migrate fully deployed applications, those nearing end-of-life, or those requiring VAST’s unique features. Instantiations has rejuvenated the Smalltalk technology with a modern user interface provided by its popular VA Assist technology and additional new functionality including WidgetKit Controls.

Yvonne M. Perkins, Vice President Enterprise Platform Software, at IBM Software said it best, “IBM is pleased to provide VisualAge Smalltalk customers with an option to continue exploiting and receiving business value from their investments in Smalltalk technology. This is part of IBM’s VisualAge Smalltalk Transition Strategy and Roadmap which enable customers to evolve their critical Smalltalk-based systems, in an incremental and staged fashion, towards standards-based, service-oriented architectures which characterize the successful, competitive On Demand enterprises of the new millennium.”