Diving into DevOps

CollabNet's Big DevOps Move

DevOps Lifecycle Manager is a new platform for managing the entire DevOps toolchain.

• By John K. Waters
• November 17, 2016

One of the more interesting pieces of news to come out of the recent DevOps Enterprise Summit was the announcement that CollabNet is making a major move into the DevOps space with a new product and partnership. The company, best known for its TeamForge cloud-based, Agile ALM platform, introduced DevOps Lifecycle Manager (DLM), a new platform for managing the entire DevOps toolchain.

DLM is designed to provide single pane of glass, dashboard, and traceability views across the DevOps toolchain, explained Eric Robertson, who is responsible for CollabNet's DevOps product line. The aim is to give companies a holistic view of the entire software development lifecycle.

"The CollabNet lab started working on this new product after seeing a gap in the market and listening to the needs of customers related to the DevOps toolchain," Robertson said in a blog post. "Due to the number of point solutions available for every part of the software development lifecycle -- tools for plan and build, and all the way to release and deploy -- enterprises have increasingly complex tool chains to manage."

The solution his company came up with, Robertson said, provides sorely missing tool integration and "a clear contextual view of all the people, processes, and actions involved in the development lifecycle."

The DLM integrates best-of-breed tool chains through an integration broker, which allows users of the product to interchange tools without affecting process flow. The company claims that any existing point tools can be integrated with the DLM for planning, build, or release management -- and they can, of course, leverage TeamForge release manager modules to connect development, operations and security teams. The DLM promotes transparency and visibility with contextual traceability that spans the entire pipeline, the company says.

Because automation is becoming such a critical capability, the product's ability to allow users to define rules around events might be a key selling point. The DLM makes it possible to customize DevOps flows and drive pipeline velocity by automating manual tasks. It also supports third-party automation systems for executing continuous integration and continuous delivery flows.

The Brisbane, Calif.-based company also announced a partnership agreement with Clarive Software, a Spain-based provider of DevOps software and services. Under the agreement, CollabNet will become a global distributor of Clarive's application release automation (ARA) products and its representative in the U.S. and Canada. The integrated solution will be available as both a hosted service and an on premise solution.

Clarive's CEO, Rodrigo Gonzalez, called the partnership a milestone in his company's growth. "CollabNet is an ideal partner because they understand the complexities and challenges of enterprise software development and their solutions focus on increasing collaboration, and transparency across tools and processes," he said in a statement.