News

ALM Product Watch 6/7: Serena's Orchestrated Suite, SmartBear ALMComplete, More

• By Michael Desmond
• June 7, 2011

Here's a look at some of the newest ALM-related products hitting the market:

Serena Advances Its "Orchestrated" ALM Strategy
Serena Software has announced updates to its Orchestrated Application Lifecycle suite, which is tailored for mid-size and larger businesses that often have a diverse portfolio of existing ALM solutions. The updated Orchestrated ALM Dashboard extends its coverage to the entire lifecycle from initial demand through deployment, and interoperates with both Serena and third-party solutions. The new Serena Requirements Manager includes Prototype Composer for creating visual mock ups and Dimensions RM for effective capture and management of requirements. The Serena Development Management Suite, also introduced with this announcement, offers hooks for .NET, Java and mainframe development.

Requirements Manger starts at $50,000 and the Development Management Suite starts at $75,000.

SmartBear ALMComplete 9.6 Released
SmartBear Software last month released ALMComplete 9.6, adding new capabilities around distributed development teams and project managers, online task boards for improved visibility and customizable support management micro-sites for better customer collaboration. ALMComplete includes the SmartBear DevComplete and QAComplete products and, according to the company, "includes capabilities for cross-project task management, customer support incident tracking and test automation." In addition to a new automation scheduler for TestComplete or HP QuickTest Professional tests, ALMComplete 9.6 features Active Directory integration for improved security and enhanced project management reporting of key performance indicators.

TaskTop Enterprise Updated
Tasktop Technologies announced Tasktop Enterprise version 2, which synchronizes tasks between ALM elements and cross-repository Agile planning. The update includes the new Tasktop Agile Planner for the Eclipse IDE, which "provides an offline-capable Scrum task board and release planner that can span repositories," the company said in a news release. Tasktop said Agile developers can show, track and share information such as user stories in HP Quality Center or an open source issue tracker. Tasktop Enterprise integrates with Accept 360, a Mylyn connector; the SmartBear CodeCollaborator peer code review tool; Polarion's Track & Wiki ALM product; and more. Also included is Tasktop for Visual Studio, which provides Tasktop connectors via the Microsoft IDE, letting .NET developers take advantage of Mylyn functionality such as instant task opening, access to the Task List while offline and a complete task editor. Base pricing for the Enteprise version is $199 per-user, per-year.

ThoughtWorks Announces Go 2.2 Agile Release Management Platform
ThoughtWorks Studiosin May announced the release of ThoughtWorks Go 2.2, an updated Agile release management platform that automates build, test and deployment activities. The new tooling enables software development teams to trace software deployments all the way back to requirements and source code. It also allows teams to manage distributed installations. The suite makes it possible to centrally manage "large numbers of continuous integration, testing and production environments," according to the company.

A free version of the tooling, called Go Community Edition, is also available and no longer requires a discreet license.

Microsoft Outlines ALM Features of Visual Studio vNext
Microsoft Corp at its Tech-Ed North America Conference in May outlined details of new ALM features in the next version of its Visual Studio IDE, currently referred to as Visual Studio vNext. The new version will enable IT operations to report potential bugs directly within Microsoft's System Center management software, and provide developers with robust information about events surround the report. A new PowerPoint plug-in also enables Visual Studio developers to trade application mockups with stakeholders to improve requirements collaboration. Microsoft offered no timetable for release of the updated tooling.