achieving competitive differentiation through agility

NOVEMBER 2012 1BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK RESEARCH SERVICES

Achieving Competitive Differentiation Through Agility

With cloud-based agile software development,

organizations can respond to fast-changing needs

at the speed their business demands.

An exclusive research report from Bloomberg Businessweek Research Services

NOVEMBER 2012 2 BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK RESEARCH SERVICES

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Agile Ramps Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Infrastructure Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Cloud-Enhanced Agility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Strategic Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

An Enterprise Approach to Cloud Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Conclusion and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Sponsor’s Statement: CollabNet’s Path to Enterprise Cloud Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

http://www.collab.net/resources


Executive SummaryOrganizations are finding that a cloud-based platform for agile software development provides the speed and flexibility they need to respond to opportunities and market changes. But this will not happen overnight. To support cloud adoption, enterprise cloud development (ECD) platforms can provide a secure path for managing development and deployment in a hybrid cloud environment.

This research report highlights how organizations are implementing and benefiting from cloud-based agile software development, including the following findings:

▪▪ The majority of respondents to a 2011 global survey by Bloomberg Businessweek Research Services (BBRS) say they want to move to the cloud within three years.

▪▪ Cloud platforms provide agile development teams with a flexible way to streamline and automate the development and release of business applications.

▪▪ The concept of DevOps is increasingly part of the agile cloud software development conversation. DevOps extends the development cycle to the production environment, which improves software reliability and tightens the continuous delivery process.

▪▪ BBRS survey respondents expect to support both traditional and cloud-based infrastructures. Cloud-based agile software development platforms, therefore, should provide companies with hybrid cloud support—that is, the flexibility to move between on-premises and cloud development environments.

▪▪ Cloud-based agile software development platforms are evolving to support the entire development and deployment lifecycle, including DevOps. Issues such as access to an array of developer tools, built-in collaborative processes, standardized governance and process management, and the ability to manage the speed, frequency and complexity of multimode and multiplatform releases must be considered. This emerging trend is becoming known as enterprise cloud development.

▪▪ IT and business leaders must conduct a thorough upfront analysis of issues such as company culture, change-management practices, leadership support, IT skill sets and costs to obtain a clear risk/reward picture.

MethodologyBloomberg Businessweek Research Services (BBRS) launched a research program in July 2012 to discover and analyze the views of C-level and line-of-business executives around the world on agile software development in the cloud. The goals of this program included:

▪▪ Assessing the importance of agility in today’s business environment.▪▪ Determining the current state of agile software development.▪▪ Determining the current state of cloud adoption.▪▪ Identifying the benefits and challenges of agile software development.▪▪ Exploring how the cloud changes and benefits agile methods of development.

This research program included in-depth telephone interviews with C-level and other senior executives within the following midsize and large organizations:

▪▪ Defense Information Systems Agency▪▪ J.D. Power and Associates▪▪ Owens & Minor▪▪ QNX Software Systems

The program included data from the 2011 BBRS survey of 489 executives from North American, Asian and European companies with at least $100 million in annual revenues. Additional survey data from research firms, plus interviews


conducted with leading consultants, industry analysts and academics, helped to provide context and further insight. Input is included from the following individuals and firms:

▪▪ Patrick Debois, independent consultant, founder of the DevOps movement ▪▪ Economist Intelligence Unit▪▪ Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC)▪▪ International Data Corp. (IDC)▪▪ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

BBRS and the author of this report, Carol Hildebrand, are grateful to all the people who participated in this project. This research project was funded by a grant from CollabNet but was written independently of this sponsor. The editorial department of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine was not involved in this project.

IntroductionIn today’s competitive business landscape, a convergence of game-changing trends is placing new value on immediacy. With rampant social media use, mobile device proliferation and an exponential increase in data, “now” is the only time that matters.

Companies are responding by gradually and selectively moving data and applications into the cloud (which enables elastic and instant application provisioning and deployment) and by embedding agile concepts and practices into their corporate cultures and software development processes. Using agile practices, developers can quickly and easily collaborate on applications that enable workers to gather, access, analyze and act immediately on information drawn from widespread and disparate sources.

Consider the following:

▪▪ Business users and consumers expect to instantly access and intuitively interact with information via digitally connected mobile devices.

▪▪ Vital information and services are contained on multiple platforms, and companies must develop applications that support them all. “Cloud, mobile, Web, legacy systems—it’s what we call multimodal development, and it’s changing the way companies develop and deploy software,” says Melinda Ballou, program director for Application Life-Cycle Management and Executive Strategies research at IDC.

▪▪ Data is available from device sensors, social media sites and corporate legacy systems.

▪▪ Companies need applications to help them quickly find and analyze pertinent information to support rapid decision-making and execution.

▪▪ A shaky economy has emphasized the need to find new growth opportunities within the existing business footprint, in addition to new ways to improve profitability through increased efficiency.

Considering all these factors, corporate agility has become a differentiator in today’s business world (see Figure 1, “The Importance of Agility,” on page 5). Research from MIT suggests that agile firms grow revenue 37 percent faster and generate 30 percent higher profits than non-agile companies.

Although technology has created a world built for speed, it also can create obstacles for corporate planning teams trying to increase business responsiveness. This is because traditional IT management methods emphasize centralized command and control, plus rigid infrastructures that do not scale quickly. The result is long application development and rollout cycles.

Clearly, existing enterprise infrastructures will not disappear overnight; instead, companies must infuse flexibility into existing systems while at the same time identifying and implementing new tools and


methodologies to build business agility into new initiatives. “Business agility is closely tied to the IT organization,” says Rick Mears, CIO at medical and surgical supply distributor Owens & Minor. “Our systems and technologies need to enable the rest of the company to enter into new products and services. The last thing we want is to have technology limit the kinds of things we can do.”

Using agile development to build business-responsive systems fosters traits executives say characterize an agile organization, including rapid decision-making and the ability to access the right information at the right time.

Meanwhile, an IT category known as enterprise cloud development (ECD) has emerged. ECD is aimed at supporting business agility through technology. It embraces the following practices to create high-performance cloud-based development platforms:

▪▪ Enabling agile software development processes on a cloud platform, which supports a continual delivery cycle that cuts development time, boosts collaboration and improves application usefulness.

▪▪ Employing a hybrid cloud strategy, which enables CIOs to use the cloud’s elastic provisioning and scalability to improve responsiveness while also cutting costs and infrastructure complexity.

▪▪ Embracing a “DevOps” strategy, which integrates operations and production with development cycles.

Agile Ramps Up Agile software development is not the same as business agility, but both share the common goal of improving responsiveness. “Business agility is supported by agile software development. It allows us to adjust our plan mid-budget based on changing customer needs,” says Jonathan Miller, vice president and CTO at global marketing information services firm J.D. Power and Associates, a business unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

Instead of the traditional waterfall development cycle, in which all the requirements and specifications are solidified up front, agile software development is geared toward rapid, continuous and adaptive delivery of tested software. An agile team builds software in small chunks, with iterative development cycles that span weeks rather than months. Daily standup meetings, generally confined to 15 minutes, enable teams to immediately adjust to changing business requirements. “We have a roadmap of the features and functions needed by an application,” Miller says. “Agile allows us to constantly evaluate the roadmap and make tradeoffs between what’s already on the plan and the perhaps more useful components that should be swapped into the plan that have become apparent over the course of the project.”

Businesses such as American Express have successfully put in place consistent and repeatable agile processes across their development centers, unifying the efforts of developers, testers and deployment teams. Doing so has accelerated development and ensured the stability of the financial services company’s 100,000-per-month application builds.1

Done right, agile software development also produces business applications that meet user requirements faster and more reliably. Owens & Minor’s Mears cites a new customer service system his team recently completed.

1 Kim S. Nash. “How AmEx Disciplined Unruly Software Updates.” CIO, June 29, 2011. http://www.cio.com/article/685325/How_AmEx_Disciplined_Unruly_Software_Updates

The Importance of Agility In your view, how important is agility to your organization’s overall business success?

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit survey, 2009

Figure 1

Extremely important— it is a core differentiator for us. 40%

Somewhat important— it contributes to our business success. 48%

Neutral—many factors shape our business

success. 10%

Somewhat unimportant—other factors play a more

significant role. 2%

http://www.cio.com/article/685325/How_AmEx_Disciplined_Unruly_Software_Updates


“We had operational folks from both the home office and field operations right there in the scrum room with us, providing input,” he says. “The iterative prototyping of features and functions is really powerful—there is no possible way to get to the end of the project without hitting the mark.”

Infrastructure Modernization The concurrent move toward cloud computing affects several aspects of agile software development. Although the cloud provides elasticity and instant provisioning for development, it also intensifies the demand for new software as more applications move to the cloud and need access to data in the cloud.

Cloud computing has become a top agenda item for many companies as CIOs look to modernize IT infrastructure and services. In a 2011 global survey by BBRS, 77 percent of respondents have either an existing cloud strategy or one in development (see Figure 2, “Cloudy Future,” below).

The change will be gradual, however. Most large companies will migrate to a private-cloud rather than a public-cloud infrastructure, and they will need to support a hybrid on-premises/cloud environment (see Figure 3, “Hybrid Clouds,” on page 7).

Respondents are reworking their internal applications to take advantage of a cloud infrastructure, signaling a significant internal transformation (see Figure 4, “Slow But Significant Transition,” on page 7).

Cloud-Enhanced Agility For many companies, the cloud is more than a pure cost-cutting ploy. According to the BBRS survey, the top three reasons for moving to a private cloud are: the faster delivery of IT solutions for business; the ability to access superior technical skill sets to satisfy new requirements; and reducing the total cost of the IT department.

The advent of cloud enhances agile software development’s ability to condense the development and deployment cycles.

Moving agile software development into a cloud environment enables teams to take advantage of cloud’s instant provisioning and elasticity while offloading deployment and maintenance chores.

“Agile is about embracing the uncertainties inherent in software development and adjusting daily as you go on. Cloud enables that because it is infinitely adjustable,” J.D. Power and Associates’ Miller says. “For example, you can do things like easily adjust infrastructure capacity after a software release.”

QNX Software Systems has found that a cloud-based development environment also enhances collaboration. With several hundred developers producing code on biweekly cycles, the company turned to a centralized development environment built in a private cloud. “It makes information more accessible, regardless of whether teams are working remotely or in the same room,” says Derrick Keefe, senior director of engineering, middleware, at the software and services firm. “They can get information on the latest build, testing or integration data.” To aid collaboration, each team also has its own wiki to find current status and backlogs, he says.

Cloudy Future Most respondents are looking to incorporate a cloud strategy into their technology infrastructures. (Total does not add up to 100% due to rounding.)

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek Research Services, 2011

Figure 2

Other 1%

We do not have a cloud computing strategy and have not

started developing it 21%

We are developing or have developed a cloud computing

strategy on our own 32%

We are developing or have developed a cloud computing

strategy with our IT outsourcing service provider 40%

We are developing or have developed a cloud

computing strategy working with a consultant that does not provide IT outsourcing

services 5%


Projects such as forge.mil take the synergies one step further. Run by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), forge.mil is a private-cloud platform that helps agile teams collaborate and develop software components for hundreds of projects. forge.mil consists of SoftwareForge, which is a free service; ProjectForge, which is a fee-for-service capability hosted behind DISA’s firewall; and the forge.mil Community, which is a collaborative content and knowledge management site available on NIPRNet, a network used by the Department of Defense (DoD) to exchange sensitive information between users and to access the Internet.

Howard Cohen, community manager at forge.mil, estimates there are currently about 18,000 users on the platform, working on 800 to 900 projects. “In the DoD, we want more—there’s lots of agile stuff going on, and forge is built around the idea of fostering agile practices and collaboration.” In addition to instant provisioning, forge.mil provides tools for tasks such as release management and version control. Other tools help developers collaborate across components or modules.

Strategic Challenges Despite all the benefits of the cloud, these new environments still present management challenges. “Cloud is not a panacea,” J.D. Power and Associates’ Miller says. “There’s a fair amount of risk, and companies need tight, strong governance around it.” For example, companies must manage diverse development and release cycles across multiple platforms, from on-premises legacy systems to multiple mobile devices. “The complexity of deployment platforms has increased,” says IDC’s Melinda Ballou. “All major businesses deploy applications across mobile, Web, legacy—putting it all into the cloud or as a service.”

The need for upfront planning and management has driven initiatives such as enterprise cloud development, which builds a secure path to a cloud-based agile development platform that integrates efforts across the software development lifecycle. Such a strategy helps companies plan for the following:

DevOps. Cloud-based agile development environments benefit from agile application lifecycle management (ALM) tools. Increasingly, companies are seeking tools that integrate the efforts and activities of development, production and operations. “The lifecycle needs to encompass more than predeployment activities,” Ballou says. “Savvy organizations have begun to coordinate operations with the early development phases, including architectural design and release planning management, and found it improved performance and reliability for applications once they were deployed.”

Known as DevOps, this methodology is designed to fill the longstanding schism between development and operational departments. “They are two different worlds,” says Patrick Debois, an independent consultant and one of the founders behind DevOps. “The clash is that software development people are evaluated based on new features while the ops team gets measured on software stability.”

Hybrid Clouds Most respondents will implement private clouds first, in addition to supporting hybrid platforms. (Percent of respondents)

Q: What percent of your IT infrastructure will be supported by each of the following in three years?


Figure 3

39%Traditional datacenter managed internally

Traditional datacenter managed by service provider

Private cloud managed internally

Private cloud managed by service provider

Public clouds

21%

13%

13%

7%

Slow But Significant Transition Most respondents will take three years to move more than half of their compute workloads to a cloud hosting platform. (Percent of respondents)

Q: What percent of your compute workloads are ready for cloud hosting today vs. in three years?

n Now n In 3 years


Figure 4

14%<5%

5%–25%

26%–50%

51%–90%

91%–100%

Don’t know

4%

33%12%

33%24%

12%42%

5%16%

3%4%


Like agile, DevOps requires strong collaboration and communication. For example, it brings system administrators into the development cycle to make sure operationally related items in the backlog receive enough attention. This approach offers shorter development cycles and more reliable software. “At Google, they make developers be on call for the first three months of a new product’s life,” Debois says. “This makes developers feel the pain they would have managing the application in production and helps them consider operational issues during development.”

Hybrid computing support. Cloud development and adoption is growing rapidly, but companies cannot immediately jettison existing datacenters and the systems they support. BBRS survey respondents expect to support both traditional and cloud-based infrastructures for at least three years, and software development

itself will often span both cloud and traditional infrastructures. Therefore, cloud-based agile software development platforms must support a hybrid environment that spans on-premises and public-cloud development, in addition to application deployment.

Risk analysis. Cloud-based agile software development is not simple. IT and business leaders must conduct a thorough upfront analysis of company culture, change-management practices, leadership support, IT skills and costs for a clear risk/reward picture. In fact, companies embarking on agile would do well to work with an outside expert who has extensive experience in large-scale agile transformation projects.

“The first thing to ask is, ‘What is the compelling business need?’” says Laura DiDio, principal analyst at the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC). “One in five migrations or initiatives like agile application development are delayed or derailed because organizations haven’t performed the due diligence necessary to scope out what they need.” For example, when service provider DST Systems migrated to an agile development platform, it took months of planning. A key point was getting developers to buy into the technology. Rather than forcing change, DST Systems accomplished this by choosing an ECD platform with enough benefits that it encouraged adoption.2

Training and support. Agile programming is a major change for developers who are accustomed to traditional techniques, and companies need to provide both coaching and change management. At J.D. Power and Associates, for instance, Miller has hired a coach to work onsite with the teams for the first six to nine months and then return for periodic tune-ups. “It’s a huge cultural change,” Miller says. “I already am getting questions about giving up offices. But you have to take that leap of faith.”

forge.mil’s Cohen adds that coaching, mentoring and teaching is vital. The forge.mil platform has a communication layer that maps linkages between and among projects to increase collaboration. “You can publish what you’re doing on the project layer to the communication layer via an API, allowing teams to share information across projects,” he says.

Data security. Data security remains the foremost concern that many companies have about ECD (see Figure 5, “Security Concerns,” above). Development platforms are maturing to support enterprise-grade security, in addition to regulatory compliance issues. But not all platforms have reached that level, and they must be thoroughly evaluated. Companies should ensure cloud vendors fulfill security requirements such as the SAS70/ISO 17799 Security Control Standards. Moreover, dedicated hosted system instances can provide additional security beyond public clouds.

2 Jerry Tubbs. “Team Building Goes Viral.” InformationWeek, February 20, 2010. http://www.informationweek.com/development/architecture-design/team-building-goes-viral/223000155

Security Concerns Security remains a concern for public cloud settings for most respondents. (Percent of respondents naming risk as a 4 or 5)

Q: Please indicate your view on the seriousness of each public cloud risk for your organization, on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being minimal risk and 5 being extremely serious risk).


Figure 5

62%Data security

Data and system integration

Data and system portability

Validity of third-party providers

IT governance

Service-level agreements

42%

41%

40%

39%

35%

http://www.informationweek.com/development/architecture-design/team-building-goes-viral/223000155


An Enterprise Approach to Cloud DevelopmentMany of these issues will resolve as cloud development platforms begin to include enterprise-grade compliance, traceability and security standards. The convergence of these platforms with agile ALM and DevOps will make ECD practices increasingly attractive.

IDC’s Ballou says she expects a broadening market for evolving platform-as-a-service (PaaS) ALM offerings. Such offerings, which provide end-to-end capabilities—from requirements through deployment—would enable organizations to access those capabilities without the headaches involved in deploying and integrating multiple best-of-breed tools.

“ALM PaaS will enable an open development and deployment platform that would provide both software lifecycle governance and orchestration—a place to store your code, manage your development, and do builds and tests,” Ballou says. “It should provide a level of flexibility and self service to choose your environment as you need it.”

For example, communications and logistics service provider Deutsche Post wanted to cut down on errors and inefficiencies across the hundreds of decentralized software development projects in its MAIL division. The division is rapidly moving to a mix of private and virtual-client clouds. Deutsche Post chose a centralized cloud development platform that codifies modern development practices and provides resource management, source-code management and continuous code integration and delivery. The platform also creates centralized IT governance and fosters collaboration and shared best practices with wikis and a shared repository for code, documents and discussions.

According to Deutsche Post, provisioning the right servers for deployment used to take four months. Now it can be done instantaneously, in addition to being configured to the particular needs of that software project.3

Conclusion and Recommendations Enterprises have tried for years to build and sustain an organizational model centered on agility, a task made more urgent by today’s ongoing economic turbulence and accelerating changes in technology usage and adoption. Responsive and agile software development processes are critical to the success of agile business models, particularly as applications are released on a faster cycle and across multiple platforms.

With the emergence of enterprise cloud development, companies now have a viable framework to manage software development and deployment in a hybrid cloud environment. Although ECD offers the possibility of real benefits, it also brings challenges. Companies must evaluate the efficacy of new development approaches and technologies to understand their impact and value.

A deliberate, well-conceived and well-executed ECD adoption blueprint is crucial. It must address issues such as cloud migration, hybrid cloud support, building a community architecture, and extending and integrating DevOps into a continuous delivery cycle. Companies that do so will create an enterprise-grade cloud development platform that truly supports business agility. n

3 CollabNet. “Deutsche Post DHL Case Study: Enterprise Agility Through DevOps.” 2012. http://www.collab.net/sites/default/files/uploads/CollabNet_casestudy_DeutschePost%20DHL.pdf

http://www.collab.net/sites/default/files/uploads/CollabNet_casestudy_DeutschePost%20DHL.pdf


CollabNet’s Path to Enterprise Cloud Development

Enterprises need a secure and compliant platform for managing agile development and deployment in a hybrid cloud

environment. This requires not only technology but also community and collaboration across agile teams.

SPONSOR’S STATEMENT

To gain insight into the business drivers and best practices surrounding enterprise cloud development, Bloomberg Businessweek Research Services interviewed Laurence Sweeney, vice president, Enterprise Transformation at CollabNet. Sweeney draws upon more than 25 years of software development experience in a variety of roles, ranging from field-based consulting to acquiring, deploying

and managing multiple agile ALM platforms for tens of thousands of developers and managers. An edited version of that discussion follows.

What is enterprise cloud development? ECD is an emerging IT category that represents the ongoing maturity of cloud development practices. It provides organizations with a secure and compliant path to manage development and deployment in a hybrid cloud environment and enables them to embrace the benefits of the cloud at their own pace. ECD includes technology, but it also emphasizes the ability to build collaborative, repeatable processes that resonate throughout the entire agile lifecycle.

Agile software development is a vital part of ECD. What is the rate of agile software development adoption in the business sector? The collision of several big industry trends is affecting agile. Most specifically, a need

for speed and flexibility in developing and rolling out new products and services has caused many companies to link their ability to develop and release software faster and more reliably to business agility. As a result, agile software development—especially scrum—has gone mainstream in the last few years. Most companies have either standardized on or introduced agile to their portfolio. For new projects, in particular, it’s a no-brainer. Larger companies are using an ROI approach to decide which applications merit agile development.

Our research shows cloud computing is a disruptive technology shift that is changing the way many companies manage and implement technology. What is the relationship between cloud and agile? Cloud, essentially, is forcing traditional IT departments into a more agile way of thinking. Attributes such as on-demand provisioning and cloud’s inherent elasticity and scalability are tailor-made for agile practices. Building a cloud-based platform also enables companies to provide important elements such as centralized access and visibility, and it enables them to unite distributed teams through a common framework of tools and processes accessible by the entire enterprise.

How does the concept of DevOps play into the agile software development spectrum? As agile software development methodologies mature, there has been an increasing emphasis

Laurence Sweeny,vice president,Enterprise Transformation at CollabNet

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK RESEARCH SERVICESNOVEMBER 2012

NOVEMBER 2012 BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK RESEARCH SERVICES

on managing agile software across the entire software lifecycle, which encompasses operational elements, too. Agile produces software faster. But if the operational folks are still surprised when a new application appears, or it has problems running in a production environment, there’s a problem. When you consider that leading-edge Web companies can release software into production several times a day, it’s clear why a lot of enterprises are looking at DevOps as the next part of the delivery chain. Instead of having two teams working in isolation, you have teams that work within a collaborative framework to both develop software and put it into production.

In a more traditional enterprise with legacy systems and more traditional software development practices, you can still introduce elements of the DevOps concept by having the separate teams work on the same platform, using common tools and processes.

What are the necessary attributes of a technology platform to enable organizations to deliver on increased agility from a development and delivery perspective?Above all else, agile and DevOps require the ability to collaborate as a team. The sweet spot is when you can use a small, collocated team; but when you scale up, the reality is that people live in different places, and you need tools to provide that collaborative development experience. This is where enterprise cloud development comes in. Cloud platforms that span both cloud and on-premises environments provide a centralized framework to provide common tools and access. Bigger businesses, particularly those in regulated industries, need things like role-based access controls, intellectual property protection, and structured audit and traceability.

The tools should be process-agnostic, because there is more than one way to implement agile with DevOps. And the platform should have the flexibility to support whatever tools people want to use.

How is CollabNet uniquely addressing customers’ need to become more agile?Over the last decade, CollabNet has successfully pioneered collaborative and distributed agile software development in the cloud for many of the world’s largest organizations. We have developed a blueprint to facilitate the shift to ECD, and we offer a combination of tools and services that deliver incremental value and position companies for the next stage in the process.

To be clear, we don’t just provide a platform; we also provide experience in building an online community. Community is one of our core strengths. We can provide training and coaching on how to work collaboratively, in addition to a whole practice of community managers who can provide coaching on scrum, testing and traditional development.

In the final analysis, we think that by pioneering both collaborative and distributed agile software development practices we provide the perfect foundation for managing a hybrid cloud-based development and deployment platform. We want our customers to succeed at each stage of the journey, and our process is built to help them do just that.

For more informationTo learn more about how CollabNet can help you develop and deploy agile-based applications in a hybrid cloud environment, visit this Web page: www.collab.net/ecd

CollabNet ECD Products and ServicesCollabNet helps enterprises manage agile development and deployment in a hybrid cloud environment through the following offerings:

Teamforge: Manage agile ALM through DevOps across locations and clouds.

Cloudforge: Move development and deployment to the cloud with CollabNet’s PaaS offering.

Scrumworks Pro: Address project management challenges of enterprise agile development teams.

http://www.collab.net/ecd

achieving competitive differentiation through agility

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