CollabNet joined the emerging ALM integration framework space today with the release of Connect, which most notably brings enterprise users Git (for code management) and JIRA (for project tracking).
CollabNet’s announcement comes a day after HP announced its ALM integration play, and reflects a growing trend among development shops wanting to keep their variety of tools but have a single place of traceability and visibility through the life cycle.
“We’ve always embraced a variety of tools,” said Chris Clarke, CollabNet’s vice president for product management. “ALM 2.0+ embraces strategies that support increased fracturing and increased heterogeneous sets of tools. But with heterogeneity, you lose visibility and governance.”
Connect, which is built on top of the company’s TeamForge ALM platform and can be implemented either on-premise or in the cloud, comes in two options: a federation option that essentially provides adapters and hooks into wherever an application resides without the need to move data; and a synchronization option that is event-based and enables data mapping and transformation, according to Clarke.
Among the features of the framework is the ability to extend workflows across a user’s tool set, he said. “The platform maintains an event handler, and any action generates an event, and the platform can hook into that event” for analysis and management, he explained.
Further, the framework provides search integration. “If an application provides a conduit into its database, you can extend search across the platform,” Clarke said, so team members, different workgroups and even remote users can share artifacts.
Aside from Git and JIRA, Connect comes with out-of-the-box integrations for HP Quality Center and Hudson, among others. Connect is available now through the release of TeamForge 6.1.1.
