Borland introduces Borland CaliberRM 2005, StarTeam 2005, a planning, command and control centre for delivering successful software

Borland Software Corporation today introduced Borland CaliberRM 2005 and Borland StarTeam 2005, solutions to help organisations better manage the requirements, resources, tasks, assets and workflow for successful, on-time delivery of quality software.

CaliberRM and StarTeam are key components of Borland`s Software Delivery Optimisation vision, transforming software development from an unpredictable and chaotic art into a more manageable and repeatable business process.

CaliberRM 2005 and StarTeam 2005 offer a number of new capabilities designed to improve visibility, predictability and control over the software delivery process. Both products offer shared information mining and analysis capabilities, termed Borland Search Server and Datamart respectively, which organisations can use to access, retrieve and analyse information across multiple, distributed repositories. This, together with the new project planning and estimation capabilities in CaliberRM, should improve the ability for organisations to manage development assets and ensure that projects achieve the business objectives for which they were designed.

"Having timely access to the right information and the ability to use that knowledge to design, adjust and speed the software delivery process is what offers real competitive advantage," said Martin Frid-Nielsen, vice-president and general manager of Developer Services Products at Borland.

"The new features in CaliberRM 2005 and StarTeam 2005 are excellent examples of how Borland is delivering on Software Delivery Optimisation, helping align teams, technology and processes to deliver software with maximum business advantage."

"With organisations trying to manage development processes that extend across multiple locations or companies, it is imperative that teams have access to relevant and up-to-date content - offering insight that will help speed the software delivery process," said Jim Duggan, research analyst at Gartner. "Unfortunately, the assets most critical to software development teams are often scattered between different repositories and inaccessible to those who need it most. Anyone bringing the benefits and rigor of data warehousing to the software development process will provide clear business advantage to their customers."

The new features within CaliberRM and StarTeam are designed to provide the infrastructure and information necessary to treat software development like a managed, business-driven process. CaliberRM, a cross-platform requirements management product, guides the definition of a software initiative, setting and managing expectations throughout the planning and development cycle. StarTeam, Borland`s software configuration management solution, provides the command and control infrastructure for managing all project assets from development through delivery. Together they provide visibility and control into an increasingly complex development process, while substantially improving communication among all project stakeholders.

New functionality in the most recent versions of CaliberRM 2005 and StarTeam 2005 include:

* Enterprise-class data analysis - Available in both CaliberRM 2005 and StarTeam 2005, Datamart provides in-depth query and analysis capabilities that track metrics, trends and problem areas across multiple repositories. With advanced graphs and reports, Datamart can help business and development teams understand resource usage, bottlenecks, potential bugs and how projects are progressing against initial predictions.

* Ad hoc information retrieval across networks - Available in both CaliberRM 2005 and StarTeam 2005 and designed to work across multiple repositories, Borland Search Server is an innovative real-time, ad hoc search and retrieval architecture that derives tangible information out of hard data to enable software teams to make better business decisions.

* Requirements-based planning and estimation - CaliberRM 2005 includes new project planning and estimation capabilities to help users more reliably predict the required investment, effort, time-to-market and associated risks of software development projects before they begin and track against those parameters during execution. The ability to select the right projects, apply the right resources and adjust projects throughout the lifecycle can help companies maximise the business value of their software investments.

* Enhanced manageability for distributed teams - In addition to new search and analysis capabilities, StarTeam 2005 includes new functionality to better manage project progress, help audit processes and evaluate the impact of proposed changes across distributed teams. StarTeam 2005 also includes system enhancements to maximize data storage, reduce server load, help eliminate downtime and improve overall network stability.

* Seamless integration with existing development environments and business tools - CaliberRM and StarTeam are vendor and platform agnostic, integrating with many of today`s leading development environments such as Borland JBuilder, Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio. Both solutions can help optimise individual productivity and improve team efficiency by integrating with leading ALM and business reporting tools used by developers, architects, analysts, testers and managers. Some of these tools include Borland Together for modelling, Borland Optimizeit for performance analysis, Business Objects, Crystal Reports, Mercury TestDirector and Microsoft Office.

"CaliberRM and StarTeam are enterprise-class tools already being used by many Fortune 1000 companies to drive greater predictability and managability over the entire software delivery process," said Boz Elloy, senior vice-president for software products at Borland. "The project management and business intelligence capabilities will help enterprises gain visibility into and across projects, offering greater return on software investments. This significantly raises the bar for other requirements and software configuration management solutions on the market today."

Borland CaliberRM 2005 and Borland StarTeam 2005 are expected to be available within the next 90 days. For more information on Borland`s software development solutions, visit http://www.borland.com/products/.