Rally Software Extends Agile ALM Platform to Meet the Unique Needs of Global Organizations

BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Rally®, the Agile application lifecycle management (ALM) leader, today announced five capabilities that drive success with Agile development in global organizations with thousands of developers. The next generation of Rally's Agile ALM platform cuts the pain of connecting enterprise tools to create a single source of record for decision-making across the business. New and enhanced capabilities include: customizable integrations, traceability with build and source code management artifacts, an app software development kit to create custom applications, Rally views in corporate dashboards and collaboration tools, and service level agreements. 

"Rally's new Enterprise Integration Framework enables our development teams to use the right tools for the job, while leveraging Rally to provide visibility into our entire software lifecycle," said Judith Mills, VP of product engineering operations at CDC Software. "This tightly woven integration supports our engineers because they never have to leave Rally for ancillary information, providing productivity gains and lowering frustration levels."

"Leading innovations like routers, smartphones, wind turbines and one of the world's largest online marketplaces are being developed with Rally's Agile ALM platform," said Ryan Martens, Rally's founder and CTO. "Because Rally's Internet platform is easily programmed and extended, many diverse organizations make Rally the source of truth for progress and quality.  They trust Rally with managing the development of their prized products and services today, and know Rally can quickly adapt to their changing needs as they improve their flow of innovative ideas to market."

1. Customizable Enterprise Integration Framework

In large organizations with thousands of developers, Rally and other enterprise tools are often highly customized to match unique software development processes. This means that connections between these systems must also be easily adapted and modified to support how teams work together.

Rally's new Enterprise Integration Framework makes it easier to connect systems across the idea-to-market lifecycle, so organizations can leverage existing investments and increase their visibility into work in progress. Upgraded Rally connectors with the new framework include HP Quality Center, IBM ClearQuest and Bugzilla. In addition to letting companies tune the information that flows between Rally and other systems, Rally's Enterprise Integration Framework can seamlessly connect to home-grown ALM systems.

2. Traceability between Rally artifacts and build systems and source code repositories

For Agile organizations, continuous integration servers play a critical role in ensuring code quality by building, testing and integrating source code changes early and often. This gives teams rapid feedback on the health of their system as it evolves. Equally important is the ability to provide traceability between build and source code management systems and project management artifacts to answer questions such as: which build was a defect fixed in, what stories are ready to accept in this build, or which source code files have the most defects?

Rally's improved traceability to build and source code management artifacts helps development and QA teams increase the quality of their company's product portfolio. Features and integrations include:

• Enhanced integrations with source code management and build tools - including Git, Hudson, Perforce and Subversion - allow direct relationships between Rally stories, defects, tasks, builds, and source code check-ins.
• New traceability reports trend the health of continuous build environments and show Agile teams where defects occur in the code base to support refactoring and quality.
• Partnerships with development tool providers AccuRev, JetBrains, StreamStep and UrbanCode let customers use best-of-breed tools instead of being locked into a single-stack proprietary toolset.

3. Application SDK and Services to Create Custom Rally Apps

Unlike many ALM vendors that can't support custom application development on their platform, Rally's platform provides near limitless extension to support the unique needs of enterprise customers. Rally's updated App Software Development Kit (SDK) simplifies the creation of custom applications by providing data-driven components. These building blocks lay the foundation for letting users leverage the business information in the Rally platform.

Rally has also broadened its professional services offerings to provide custom app development. These services let customers take advantage of Rally's extensive expertise in creating custom functionality that tunes and extends Rally to meet specific visibility, reporting or collaboration needs. In addition, the Rally App Catalog includes a standard set of supported apps that address common needs of different roles, organization types and Agile processes.

4. Rally views in enterprise collaboration tools

Company stakeholders rely on business collaboration tools like SharePoint and Google Sites to communicate status and support their decision making. Rally understands the importance of these collaboration tools and now lets users embed Rally data and reports inside their corporate dashboards and wikis. Embedding Rally data into familiar environments improves collaboration between development roles, across departments and throughout entire organizations.

5. Service Level Agreement

Rally's new Service Level Agreement (SLA) reflects the mission-critical role Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ALM platforms now play in technology-driven companies. Rally Unlimited Edition and Enterprise Edition customers are now guaranteed up to 99.9% of uninterrupted service, outside of scheduled service windows. The Rally SLA provides users increased assurance and compensation for unplanned downtime, along with a means to measure and monitor Rally's operations performance. Rally users are invited to view real-time, on-demand system performance, updates and scheduled maintenance from the Operations Performance page in Rally's online customer community, Agile Commons.  

Pricing and Availability

Rally's Agile ALM platform is immediately available in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or on-premise deployment models. New features and enhancements are available in the coming weeks in two editions: Rally Enterprise Edition and Rally Unlimited Edition. Starting at $35/user/month, Rally Enterprise Edition is ideal for coordinating multi-team programs with support for shared product backlogs. Rally Unlimited Edition, available for $49/user/month, scales to become an entire organization's system of record for status, progress and quality. For detailed product capabilities, see Rally's Edition Comparison guide at http://www.rallydev.com/agile_products/editions/.

About Rally

Rally is the recognized leader in Agile application lifecycle management (ALM). We are dedicated to helping organizations embrace Agile and Lean development practices that increase the pace of innovation and improve product quality. According to a study by QSM Associates, software-driven companies that rely on Rally's Agile ALM products and services are 50% faster to market and 25% more productive than industry averages. The company's experienced services group, including training through Agile University, guides companies through the organizational change required to become innovative, Agile businesses. Rally's products, including AgileZen, currently supports more than 3,000 corporate customers, 68,000 projects and 123,000 users in 60 countries. For more information, visit www.rallydev.com.

Rally, the Rally logo, Rally Software Development, and AgileZen are trademarks of Rally Software Development Corp. Third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Rally