CA Technologies Redefines Project and Portfolio Management User Experience with Latest Release of CA Clarity PPM

New Features and Enhancements Help Companies Drive Innovation, Transform Business and Sustain Optimum IT and Corporate Investment Portfolios

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CA Technologies

Jan 18, 2012, 09:15 ET

ISLANDIA, N.Y., Jan. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- CA Technologies (Nasdaq: CA) today announced a new release of CA Clarity™ Project and Portfolio Management (PPM).

This release redefines the user experience and improves customers' ability to:

Innovate by managing the innovation lifecycle from the idea phase to execution;
Transform the business by providing a value roadmap to make informed decisions and better align IT initiatives with business strategy; and,
Sustain the optimum portfolio of IT and corporate initiatives and investments to deliver greater business value.

"Organizations are looking to CA Technologies for Business Service Innovation - using advanced technologies and new approaches to deliver innovation and value to their customers," said Brian Bell, general manager, Service and Portfolio Management, CA Technologies. "We see organizations expanding how they use PPM by applying it to business initiatives such as cloud service adoption for business transformation, new product development, managing projects from conception to execution and enterprise collaboration.

"With its redefined user experience and integrated enterprise social collaboration, CA Clarity PPM v13 revolutionizes how organizations use PPM by increasing business alignment and providing a means to significantly simplify the adoption of PPM within IT organizations and across other business areas. It offers a single solution for managing the work, resources, budgets and performance of IT and business initiatives, whether delivered on premise or on-demand as a service," Bell added.

This release of CA Clarity PPM furthers customers' ability to reduce costs through improved productivity and a simplified user experience; to achieve faster time-to-value from their software investment; and to collaboratively innovate across varied functions within the enterprise.

Improved productivity is achieved through a new consistent, intuitive user interface (UI) that simplifies the user experience to enhance productivity and help reduce costs. The new UI provides:

Smarter, more refined navigation across the solution with streamlined menus, search-as-you-type data validation, and in-line editing. The UI requires fewer clicks to manage and access information, and gives users the ability to personalize views and save favorites.
Improved interactive charts, dashboards and Gantt views that make real-time PPM information accessible and relevant to anyone at any level across the organization.

Collaborative innovation is achieved by incorporating idea capture and community collaboration, requirements planning and Agile planning throughout the CA Clarity PPM solution.

The blend of these capabilities into a single solution helps manage the full lifecycle of innovation. CA Clarity PPM provides complete control over project inception, delivery and management for both traditional and agile project management.
By leveraging Chatter from Salesforce.com, CA Clarity PPM incorporates enterprise social collaboration, thus refining requirements planning and Agile project delivery. Chatter feeds also can be directed to smart phones for real-time collaboration and allow users to "follow" items of interest ranging from ideas, requirements, tasks or individuals.

Rapid time-to-value of the software can be realized through multiple operational enhancements including automated financial management and visual roadmaps as well as an easy upgrade from earlier on-premise versions and the option to use CA Clarity PPM delivered on-demand as a service.

"This release of CA Clarity PPM has many new functions and features that extend its utility and benefit beyond the IT department," said Tammi Reel, vice president of the New York City CA Clarity PPM User Group and senior application analyst, Emerging Health, Montefiore Information Technology. "The simplicity, added features and a new user interface should enhance productivity for all users – from senior management to project managers. CA Clarity PPM users should see version 13 as a breath of fresh air. It is truly an extreme makeover to the CA Clarity PPM application."

Available on premise, on-demand as a service, or hosted and implemented by CA Services, CA Clarity PPM v13 changes the way partners and customers view and use the solution. Customers who engage CA Services to host and implement the software can realize savings on capital investments and internal resource expenditures, since CA Services will also monitor and manage the solution and infrastructure, and make CA Clarity PPM upgrades available automatically.

Customers who use the software on-premise, on-demand, or as a hosted solution have the option to engage CA Services for an in-depth assessment to extend the value they can derive from PPM and use CA Services to perform upgrades.

"This release of CA Clarity PPM delivers everything a solution update should – it improves the product without changing the existing functionality that customers love," said Bob Schwartz, managing principal, Digital Celerity, a premier CA Technologies solution provider partner. "We expect this release to open new markets for us with an improved ability to demonstrate CA Clarity PPM's expansive capabilities. The agility to move from an innovative idea to an element of the portfolio to be managed in a single solution is powerful for the mid-market."

The latest release of CA Clarity PPM is available today. For additional information, please visit http://www.ca.com/us/products/detail/CA-Clarity-PPM.aspx.

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About CA Technologies

CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) is an IT management software and solutions company with expertise across all IT environments – from mainframe and distributed, to virtual and cloud. CA Technologies manages and secures IT environments and enables customers to deliver more flexible IT services. CA Technologies innovative products and services provide the insight and control essential for IT organizations to power business agility. The majority of the Global Fortune 500 relies on CA Technologies to manage evolving IT ecosystems. For additional information, visit CA Technologies at www.ca.com.

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