Borland’s Pitch: ‘Software Delivery Optimization’

As more software development companies find ways to simplify the application development process, Borland Software is unveiling a new software delivery optimization (SDO) model built around that concept.

The package includes tools that improve the way information is piped across an enterprise.


At its Borland Conference 2004 Monday, the Scotts Valley, Calif., maker of infrastructure and development software preached about aligning software development more closely with business processes, an important ingredient of providing better application lifecycle management (ALM).


Borland introduced refreshed software tools to help companies
improve the predictability and control over the software delivery process.


CaliberRM, a requirements management product that works cross-platform, sets
and manages expectations throughout the planning and development cycle.
StarTeam, the company’s software configuration management tool, provides the
command and control infrastructure for managing project assets from
development through delivery, or through the ALM.


Both products feature Borland Search Server for mining data and Datamart for
analysis, which customers can use to access, retrieve and analyze metrics,
trends and problem areas across multiple repositories.


Taken together, the tools provide true business intelligence functionality,
offering greater visibility and control while improving communication among
project stakeholders. To provide as much flexibility for customers with
various operating environments, CaliberRM and StarTeam also integrate with
the company’s own JBuilder, Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio.


To further make the software delivery optimization model work, Borland said
it has expanded its services organization; made education, consulting and
technical products available to customers; and pledged to set up a portal and
dashboard in early 2005 called Borland University to train, certify, test
and educate teams on how to better deliver software.


Borland CaliberRM 2005 and Borland StarTeam 2005 are expected to be
available within the next 90 days.


Carl Zetie, vice president at Forrester Research, said in a recent report
that increased complexity of software architecture has made it necessary to
employ methods of improving software delivery. Meta Group vice president
Thomas Murphy agreed.


“I feel like they finally understand what ALM means and how to leverage it
into a positive direction,” Murphy told internetnews.com. “IT has
delivered for many years a lot of productivity, collaboration and analytics
to the business. Now we are doing it for ourselves, kind of ERP [enterprise
resource planning] for development. SDO plays on this idea to talk about how
you have a business, which of course is where everything starts.”

Murphy continued: “This is beyond what most tools companies are talking
about today because it encompasses issues like portfolio management. I think
a number of companies are all circling around parts of the solution, and
Borland only has a part today but now they have a vision and a way to move
forward where I feel like before they were merely parroting common terms.”


Borland competes with Microsoft and IBM’s Rational division for application development mind share. Microsoft
Monday unveiled Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, a development tool for
application developers building Windows, Web or mobile applications.

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