MALMO, Sweden, April 14, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Telelogic (Other OTC:TGIAF) (Stockholm:TLOG), the leading global provider of solutions for advanced systems and software development, today announced further enhancements to Telelogic Synergy(TM), its powerful suite of Change and Configuration Management (CM) tools that help optimize the development process. Telelogic Synergy, which is comprised of CM Synergy(TM) with ActiveCM and ChangeSynergy(TM), has been praised recently by industry analysts and users alike as the most advanced CM tool on the market. With the latest enhancements contained in this latest release Telelogic once again raises the bar for what CM tools can do and how they are used.
To maintain competitiveness in a challenging economic climate, many organizations are reducing costs by using offshore development teams, outsourcing component development and/or increasing component reuse. According to Jim Duggan, Vice President, Research Director at Gartner, "300 of the Fortune 500 used offshore development or outsourcing in 2002".
While current CM tools can be used to manage files, versions, and builds for centralized development teams, broader and more in-depth "release management" capabilities are required when a globally distributed development organization and component reuse is involved. Ground breaking new features to the Synergy tool suite provide these capabilities, further cementing its position as the leading solution for managing software and system changes for large, complex projects and geographically dispersed development teams.
"As in the past with task-based CM and the revolutionary ActiveCM interface, Synergy once again raises the bar for CM functionality," said Anders Lidbeck, president and CEO of Telelogic. "With its ability to control, manage and track change on a global scale, Synergy is redefining what CM tools can do, how they can be used, and the value that they can deliver."
Comments from Industry Analysts
"Large scale, global development represents a major increase in complexity," said Jim Duggan, Vice President, Research Director at Gartner. "To realize the full value of this global approach, organizations need more robust process and standards to ensure consistency. Companies will need to upgrade their CM infrastructures to support these processes and to aid communication, visibility, control and decision-making."
"Support for different styles of distributed development -- centrally- managed, replicated or federated -- become important with the likelihood that any given organization may choose all these styles at different times for different projects," said Uttam Narsu, Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc. "SCM tools are increasingly being asked to not only support these modes of development, but to centrally coordinate and actively manage them as well."
Comments from Customers
Hewitt Associates, a global management consulting and outsourcing firm specializing in human resource solutions, has increased productivity by more than 18 percent per year since adopting CM Synergy. "Our systems are extremely complex and there are thousands of variants," said Bill Richards, CM Systems Administrator for Hewitt. "CM Synergy speeds up the development process because it guarantees the consistency of our software configurations all along the process. We were constantly rebuilding and debugging because of our inconsistent software configurations. It is clear that we have realized at least an 18 percent improvement in productivity using CM Synergy." With CM Synergy saving each Hewitt developer several hours every week - while at the same time improving the quality of code - savings have been significant.
Another company leveraging Synergy is SchlumbergerSema, where the telecom technical support group typically works on approximately 45 customer projects at a time, each involving over 100 developers located around the world. Given the size of these projects and locations of the programmers, centrally managing these projects is extremely challenging.
"The Distributed Change Management capability in CM Synergy met our exacting requirements because it enables remote project teams to work seamlessly together," said Linda Richardson, manager of the telecom technical support group at SchlumbergerSema. "That means that teams in India, Canada and the United Kingdom can work on the same development project. It was the only solution to offer this approach and for this reason alone it has well justified its purchase."
Delphi Delco Electronics Systems is successfully implementing Telelogic Synergy to meet its configuration management needs, helping coordinate software projects and promote component reuse at a dozen development sites around the world. Using Synergy's task-based system for configuration management -- instead of a file-based system - was a concept change for developers. It has made component reuse simpler and easier, particularly with distributed development teams all working on the same projects. A press release issued today by Telelogic contains more information on the Synergy implementation at Delphi Delco Electronics Systems.
Key Enhancements
Synergy's advanced Release Management capabilities now enable teams to plan their product roadmap directly within Synergy and allow different projects to use different development processes. For example, some teams will want to use a strict formal development process such as the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM), while agile or RAD processes are more popular for other teams. Synergy also enables each team to configure its own process templates to define the process that is most appropriate to ensure success.
Synergy also enables the development process to be distributed to remote teams, not just project data and change requests. Process templates can be defined and centrally administered in one location and distributed to remote teams, ensuring control and consistency across the extended team. In addition, development processes for different projects can be centrally administered from different sites, even though the project data resides in a common repository.
Synergy's powerful Distributed Change Management (DCM) capabilities have also been extended. As a result, the CM capabilities of Synergy can scale up to support thousands of developers around the world. Synergy can also be used to support offshore development initiatives.
Telelogic Synergy's unique ActiveCM interface has also been enhanced. Launched in 2002, ActiveCM automates away approximately 90 percent of the administrative tasks related to using CM systems. ActiveCM, now a standard feature, enables organizations to finally overcome user resistance to CM systems and capitalize on the benefits that these systems offer with none of the previous cost overhead and productivity- draining issues.
New Features
For Telelogic CM Synergy, new features include:
Release Management: With the ability to plan your product roadmaps to manage release dependencies directly within Synergy and distribute processes as well as project data, users can manage, track, and centrally administer multiple projects and releases across the organization for maximum efficiency.
ActiveCM and Role-Based Interfaces: Previously an add-on option, ActiveCM is packaged with the new release of CM Synergy. Intuitive role-based interfaces help users in every role within the development team focus on their respective unique goals with optimized tools to help them concentrate on core responsibilities without being distracted by extraneous change management activities. Even the least experienced CM users can easily participate in a task-based development process with the rest of the team without the need to become experts in CM processes. As a result, organizations can streamline CM for faster, more efficient software development since CM Synergy with ActiveCM requires minimal training and CM knowledge.
Formal Baselines: By automating an iterative development process and by supporting a formal test process - best practices for minimizing schedule risk and improving visibility of project status - CM Synergy provides users with unprecedented visibility of real-time project status. Users can quickly identify which requirements have been implemented between two builds and which are ready for testing.
Component Reuse: Organizations can implement the best practice of software reuse with superior control over configurations and advanced techniques for data sharing across teams.
Data Archiving: The new Save Offline and Delete features provide powerful and cost effective ways to maintain large, enterprise databases. It allows for the clean up of unwanted data and to save valuable data offline before it is deleted from the database. For convenience, users can preview objects that will be saved and/or deleted.
Key Telelogic ChangeSynergy, key features include:
Perl API: ChangeSynergy supports a new Perl based API that enables unique automated scripting capabilities that can be used to access external data sources and applications. Advanced workflows with automatic transitions of related change requests can be implemented easily as soon as certain conditions are met.
Security Enhancements: In conjunction with firewall and SSL capability, an organization will be able to expand its ChangeSynergy installation to outside subcontractors or suppliers for optimal communication without compromising security. The robust reliability of ChangeSynergy's security enhancements ensures that subcontractors can only access their own data.
Generated Help Files: ChangeSynergy can generate online help files based on a team's customized lifecycle using the point-and-click interface. Help text to guide end users through their custom process can also be generated quickly and easily.
Availability and Platform Support
Telelogic CM Synergy 6.3 and ChangeSynergy 4.3 are available from April 14th 2003 with Servers on HP-UX 11 and 11i, Sun Solaris 2.8 and 2.9, Windows NT 4.0 SP6a, Windows 2000 SP3, IBM AIX 5.1, HP Compaq Tru64 5.1a, SGI IRIX 6.5.10 and Red Hat Linux 8.0.
About Telelogic
Founded in 1983, Telelogic(R) is the leading global provider of solutions for advanced systems and software development. The company's integrated best-in-class software tools, supported by professional services, enable companies to automate their entire development lifecycle, resulting in improved quality and predictability with reduced time-to-market and overall costs. To ensure interoperability with third-party tools, Telelogic's products are built on an open architecture and standardized languages. As an industry leader and technology visionary, Telelogic is actively involved in shaping the future of advanced systems and software development by participating in industry organizations like 3GPP, ETSI, INCOSE, ITU-T, MOST, OMG and others.
Headquartered in Malmo, Sweden with U.S. headquarters in Irvine, California, Telelogic has offices in 17 countries worldwide. Customers include Alcatel, BAE SYSTEMS, BMW, Boeing, DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Bank, Ericsson, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Philips, Siemens and Thales. For more information, please visit www.telelogic.com.
Telelogic, Telelogic DOORS, Telelogic DocExpress, and Telelogic Tau are the registered trademarks of Telelogic. Telelogic Tau Architect, Developer, Tester, Synergy and Active CM are trademarks of Telelogic. All other trademarks are the properties of respective holders.
Contact Americas/Asia: Contact Europe: Michael E. Donner, VP, Ingemar Ljungdahl, Marketing & Communications Chief Technology Officer Telelogic Americas and Asia/Pacific Telelogic AB Phone: +1 (949) 885-2496 Phone: +46 40 650 00 00 E-mail: michael.donner@telelogic.com ingemar.ljungdahl@telelogic.com
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