Software provides visibility for application development.
Press Release Summary:
Through automated software code analysis, CAST Application Intelligence Platform provides information, metrics, and visibility needed to run application development like business. Coupled with QA, PPM, and SCM tools, IT organizations can create full cycle AD governance. Program ensures correct interaction across different application layers and technology, and helps identify potential security breaches and risk patterns embedded in applications.
Original Press Release:
CAST Introduces the First Software Solution that Provides the Visibility Needed to Run Application Development Like A Business
Latest Release of CAST's Application Intelligence Platform Includes New Language Capabilities, Enhanced Security and Standards Monitoring, and an AD Governance Dashboard
NEW YORK, March 6 / -- CAST, a pioneer in AD Governance software, announced today a significant step toward achieving the vision of helping IT organizations run application development like a business. Major product enhancements to the CAST Application Intelligence Platform -- "the Software that knows Software" -- will change the way IT executives govern application development.
"Helping our customers better govern application delivery by providing software to objectively monitor and control the quality and productivity of development work being done when building and maintaining applications is at the heart of CAST's vision," said Vincent Delaroche, CAST founder, President and CEO. "The release of version 5 of our Application Intelligence Platform gives IT management an easy way to capture and view the information needed for better AD governance. With CAST's metrics and information customers can transform application maintenance and development into a world driven by performance and operational excellence."
CAST Fills an Important Gap in the AD Governance Software Space AD Governance is the desire for accountability and optimal performance across the people, process and technologies in a maintenance and development organization. CIOs and leaders of Application Development are looking for ways to continuously improve, to drive operational excellence, and to ensure that they get the maximum return for their investments in AD.
Traditionally AD Management has looked to Project Portfolio Management, Quality Assurance, or Software Configuration Management tools to help them manage the software build process. But without the visibility into the software code itself IT management is unable to answer critical questions like:
o Are the business critical applications architecturally sound?
o Will our applications be able to withstand time?
o How easily can the applications adapt to changing business needs?
o Did the development team follow industry and corporate standards? Are they adhering to re-use and SOA guidelines?
o How difficult will it be to transfer this application to an outsourcer? From one outsourcer to another?
o Is the development team productive? Is there a mechanism to accurately measure the productivity and quality of the work they produce?
o Which applications are eating up the maintenance budget and why?
o Will the savings from outsourced development be overshadowed by high maintenance costs?
o Are the outsourcers delivering what they are supposed to?
The CAST Application Intelligence Platform provides the necessary monitoring and control missing in the current Application Lifecycle Management environment. Through automated software code analysis CAST provides the information, metrics and visibility needed to run AD like a business. Coupled with QA, PPM and SCM tools IT organizations can create full cycle AD governance.
"At Allianz we are using score carding and KPI tracking to improve the operational excellence of our maintenance and development teams," said Paul Camille Bentz, AGF Group CIO. "With CAST we get the unbiased metrics that we need to measure, monitor, and improve the performance of our development organization."
"Having a fact-based decision making process is a critical component to better AD Governance," says Jim Duggan, Research Vice President, Gartner Inc. "Business clients increasingly demand predictable delivery and reliable software. Furthermore, the complexities of globally distributed development and the depletion of technical skills within IT organizations make it harder for teams to succeed without more formal processes and the careful application of tools. IT organizations need to re-examine their processes and supporting tools to improve quality delivery."
Introducing Version 5.0 - New Languages, Architectural Rules and the AD Governance Dashboard
The CAST Application Intelligence Platform v5.0 actually reads and understands the source code in complex business applications. With this new release CAST has expanded the depth and breadth of analysis capabilities as well as improved the mechanism by which AD management can view and manipulate critical information about their application portfolio.
New language capabilities added to the CAST Application Intelligence Platform.
o For the first time CAST software can read and understand SAP's ABAP programming language.
o The CAST Application Intelligence Platform can now read and understand all languages in mainframe and modern distributed applications including:
3/4GL .NET J2EE Web
C, Pro*C, VB, PB, Others: VB.NET, Java, ASP, JavaScript, PHP
C++, Oracle PL1, C#, JSP, VBScript, HTML
Cobol Forms & RPG ASPNET XML
Reports,
Delphi
Relational Databases Business Objects SAP Tibco
Oracle PL/SQL, Sybase & Business Objects ABAP Business Works
SQL Server T-SQL, IBM
SQL/PSM
New security audit capabilities added to quality and architectural standards monitoring in the CAST Application Intelligence Platform
o The CAST Application Intelligence Platform can analyze software code and track adherence to standards in naming conventions, best practices, documentation, architecture and performance for the following languages: SQL-PSM, VB, T-SQL, PL-SQL, Power Builder, JSP, Java, Oracle Forms, .NET, C++, COBOL, ASP, and ABAP. Customer standards and programming rules can easily be added to the platform.
o In Architecture, the CAST Application Intelligence Platform can ensure correct interaction across the different application layers and technology (Front End, DBMS, Mainframe and Middleware) and specifically enforce the correct usage of the .NET and JAVA framework.
o The CAST Application Intelligence Platform also helps identify potential security breaches and risk patterns embedded in the applications. Specifically, CAST can identify possible illegal data access, illegal access to external functions from the database source code, illegal access to operating system functions, access to timer functions, access to buffer management functions, and unexpectedly erased functions.
AD Governance Dashboard
o Configurable, web based dashboard that AD management can use to monitor the health and vitality of their application portfolio and the productivity and effectiveness of their development and maintenance teams.
o Includes critical metrics on each application such as Robustness, Maintainability, Changeability, Transferability and Performance
o Customers can benchmark their applications within their portfolio and against industry averages, and can track changes over time
o APIs connect the CAST AD Governance Dashboard with PPM and Configuration Management tools to enable managers to track costs and changes associated with applications in the portfolio so they can understand and impact maintenance cost drivers.
About the CAST Solution
CAST software is being used to industrialize the development of complex business applications and transform the development world -- currently perceived as complex, obscure and sometimes artistic -- into a world that is easier to understand, transparent and driven by performance and operational excellence.
The CAST software platform -- "the software that knows software" -- helps IT management and IT services companies better govern their application development. CAST automatically analyzes business applications and provides the information and objective metrics that management must have to measure, monitor and control team activities for on-time, on-quality delivery at the best cost, whether in-house or outsourced. For our customers this means more adaptable, robust and reliable software applications that can withstand time and change with the flexibility that the business requires. With CAST customers can lower maintenance costs and reduce risk in their application portfolio, risks such as system outages, project failures, drifts in application maintainability, vendor lock-in, regulatory non-compliance and security. And IT executives get a mechanism to drive continuous improvement in their critical applications and in the teams that build and maintain those apps.
"Organizations that have tackled compliance issues, such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II, know that determining whether and where the organization has exposure to the various compliance initiatives is a costly endeavor. It is costly because exposure is buried deep inside the source code of the company's applications. Therefore, organizations need tools that can read and assess source-code-level exposure. Tools that don't read source code to build the application knowledge repository, such as the PPM vendors' offerings, will not be able to assess exposure, determine the size or complexity of an application in any meaningful way, or assess the applications' exposure to various threats." From "Got Legacy? Four Fates Await Your Applications" Forrester Research, Inc., January 10, 2006.
About CAST
CAST is the world leader and pioneer in Application Intelligence Software -- "the software that knows software(R)" - providing the metrics and information IT executives must have to better govern application maintenance and development. Founded in 1990, CAST is listed on Compartment C-Eurolist by Euronext Paris (Euronext: CAS) and serves Global 2000 organizations worldwide with a network of 11 fully staffed offices in the US and Europe. More than 600 organizations around the world are using CAST software to run AD like a business. For more information visit www.castsoftware.com.
CONTACT: Kevin Young, +1-212-871-8335, k.young@castsoftware.com
