Aldon today announced a new version of Aldon Lifecycle Manager and a new compliance solution called Build Release Management Solution.

Aldon Lifecycle Manager (Enterprise Edition) V6.0, is the latest version of its software change management solution and now has connectivity to today's most widely used version control products. This new version allows software teams to benefit from a comprehensive application lifecycle management (ALM) solution without disrupting or changing a developer's preferred version control application. The product is an integral component to Aldon's Build Release Management (BRM) solution also announced today. It demonstrates the company's continued commitment to delivering solutions that address both the IT manager and developer needs, the company said.

Aldon Lifecycle Manager plays a key role in the application lifecycle, automating the development process, facilitating team development, and deploying applications across multiple platforms while extending the reach into full enterprise development environments. This latest release goes beyond its core software change and configuration management functionality, allowing software teams to use the product more as a "Release Manager," providing a single, auditable path from build to production. Aldon Lifecycle Manager handles the builds, promotions and release management, while the version control systems (Subversion, CVS, Perforce or Microsoft Visual SourceSafe or Team Foundation) manage check-ins, check-outs, and other developer functions. Since all of the process is defined to the Aldon system, current process documentation is always visible and available.

Key components of the Aldon Lifecycle Manager (Enterprise Edition) 6.0 include:

• Import Command: The new Aldon Import command checks in the results of the customer's build process into the first testing environment of the release. Each import results in a new "build package." The build package can then be promoted through the move-to-production lifecycle.
• History/Traceability: The Import command collects and stores identifying information to tie the build package back to files and other inputs used in the build. The information is generally a revision number, tag or label that is meaningful to the versioning tool. The product keeps that information for so changes in each build package can be traced back to the original source code and developer.
• Package Promotion: Build packages can be promoted through the application lifecycle as a unit. Simply select the package and click promote. Aldon Lifecycle Manager checks authorizations to ensure the package has been approved for promotion and automatically moves the package to the next stage of the lifecycle.
• Package Deployment: As packages are imported and moved from stage to stage, Aldon LM will deploy them to the appropriate target machines/locations for testing or production. Deployment can be manual or automatic. Rules can be created to identify which packages go to which servers at each stage of the lifecycle. On import, automatic deployment may be used to automatically deploy to servers used to run build verification tests.
• Integrity Assurance: The target environment is cleared before a promote or import to ensure that the target environment is clean before promoting the package. Since promotion includes the entire package, the Aldon solution knows exactly what is in the target environment once the promote process is complete. Users can be confident that they are testing exactly what they mean to test.
• Failure Protection: A partial failure of an import or promote marks the target environment, preventing promotion or deployment of the package until the problem is resolved.
• Recovery/Deployment: Should it be necessary, a previously deployed package can be selected and redeployed to replace a defective package.
• Permissions Enforcement: Users can be individually authorized to request and/or approve a promotion. These permissions can be different for each stage of the lifecycle and for each application or version of an application.
• Task Management: A build package can be associated with one or more tasks. The association applies to all files in the package. This allows for viewing and historical tracking by task.

Aldon Lifecycle Manager comes with a host of other benefits that helps IT shops streamline development. It allows users to quickly access up-to-the-minute information on productivity, staff utilization, application development progress, deployments, and statistics on incident resolution and other historical data. Users can improve, accelerate, and oversee the entire development processes. It can provide teams with customizable reports and dashboards that offer instant overviews of project status, metrics, and key performance indicators providing the visibility and information needed to make decisions about deploying resources and assessing the return on IT projects. It provides superior collaboration across an IT department, allowing developers and managers to see the change request information that was gathered during the initial reporting and review process and actually get involved and give technical input before mistakes can be made.

Aldon's ALM solutions have impacted thousands of end-user customers ensuring that change management, collaboration, and compliance are applied consistently across all areas of IT, the company said.

Aldon Lifecycle Manager 6.0 is available immediately. For more information visit http://www.aldon.com/products/lm/.

Aldon Build Release Management

Aldon, the company recognized as a leading visionary in Gartner Inc.'s March 2009 Magic Quadrant for Software Change and Configuration Management, today introduced a new solution designed specifically to help IT organizations address growing compliance challenges in distributed development environments while improving their application build and release processes. Aldon's new Build Release Management (BRM) solution allows development teams to use whatever versioning tool they choose (Subversion, CVS, Perforce or Microsoft Visual SourceSafe or Team Foundation) while bringing powerful automation and compliance support to their application lifecycle. Management gets the benefits of easy-to-maintain, self-documenting, automated compliance processes while developers can continue using their tools of choice.

"Our new BRM solution reflects Aldon's focus on making IT compliance simple for IT organizations no matter how complex the environment," said Matt Scholl, Aldon president and CEO. "We look forward to helping an even broader range of organizations establish best practices and address both the daily and long-term challenges they face."

The Compliance Factor

Compliance-regulatory and best practice-can be a big challenge for many. Industry analysts indicate our world is expected to get more regulated, not less. So even if IT shops are not dealing with compliance yet, they could be sometime soon. Many IT shops have resisted adopting compliance-savvy solutions because it would mean developers would have to stop working in their chosen version control solution. Fortunately, that is no longer the case with the Aldon BRM solution. It provides IT organizations with all the necessary compliance documentation they need, while allowing developers to keep working in their preferred versioning tool

The Aldon BRM solution offers the following for compliance:

• End-to-end Process Automation
• Simple Point and Click Process Definition/Maintenance
• Embedded Process Documentation
• Enforced Approval Management
• Automated Activity Logging
• Lifecycle Activity Reporting
• Separation of Duties Enforcement

The Build Release Management Factor

It's not just about compliance. These days the majority of IT shops have some sort of version control tool-one, two or more. While version control tools give users the ability to manage software versioning through check-outs and check-ins, they are not designed to assist with the software build and release process or tracking code and changes to it. With Aldon's BRM solution, development shops are able to combine the cost effectiveness of ubiquitous versioning tools with the powerful application lifecycle process automation and compliance support found with Aldon, thereby extending the software change management reach into distributed environments.

From the time a build is assembled and imported into the Aldon BRM solution, it tracks, manages, and deploys an application through automated workflows and best practices. At any given time, users can see, capture, promote, and report on changes in the software development cycle. By replacing tedious manual processes, IT organizations can not only address compliance, they can reduce costs, ensure application integrity, gain efficiencies, and speed up software delivery times.

The Aldon BRM solution provides the following for build and release management:

• Point and click package promotion
• Guaranteed package integrity
• Secure, authorized package deployment and redeployment
• Complete history and traceability

The BRM Process

How the Aldon BRM works is that developers do all their checkouts, check-ins, branching, tagging and other version control functions in their preferred version control tool. Once they decide they have a build package ready, the package is automatically passed over to the BRM system. Then the build package moves through a pre-defined software development lifecycle (that is set up from the get-go) complete with all the compliance savvy functions you need like automated processes, workflows, notifications, and approvals. Management can easily track any changes and provide the necessary compliance reports. So from the time a build is assembled and imported into the system, the BRM solution tracks, manages, and deploys the application through automated workflows and best practices. At any given time, users can see, capture, promote, and report on changes in the software development cycle.

Rather than relying on scripts or manual procedures to create compliant move-to-production processes, the Aldon BRM solution provides simple point and click setup function for creating and maintaining approved workflows. Once the workflows are defined, the system enforces and automates them, relieving the staff of that administrative burden.

Aldon's BRM solution makes it easy for development and operations to coordinate efforts, reducing the costs associated with promoting new code to production. With visibility into exactly what has been changed in each package and enforcement of standard procedures, operations staff can forestall potential risks before pushing code into production.

The Best Uses for Aldon BRM solutions:

• Working on Multiple Releases and Applications Simultaneously: Applications can be broken down into versions or releases. This helps maintain custom versions or modified packaged applications and also lets developers maintain a production version concurrently with a new version under development.
• Addressing Compliance: Managers can always view, control, and report to auditors every change, all along the development road. Aldon makes achieving IT compliance easy which leads to increased productivity and higher quality software.
• Gaining Visibility Across Lifecycle: Any build package can be associated with one or more tasks. The association applies to all files in the package, allowing a full view of history.
• Keeping Build Package Integrity: With the complete ability to capture, see, track, and report on all changes, users have the capability to maintain package integrity and automate workflow.
• Not Impeding Developers: Developers can use whatever version control tool they so choose. Development teams can work in isolation and stay in their own environment until it's time to build the package. Then Aldon takes over, and if the package has to go back to them, it brings the history of what happened with it helping developers know what happened.
• Failsafe Build Promotion: When a partial failure of a build package happens the target environment is marked, preventing promotion or deployment of the package until the problem is solved.
• Air Traffic Control for Build Packages: Aldon ensures that the appropriate files are automatically deployed to the correct locations throughout the software development process. When it comes to application deployment, Aldon deploys the components to appropriate target locations at every stage. This means that the solution will automatically gather, package, distribute, and install application components to all target platforms with the greatest of ease.

Aldon's BRM solution combines the automated workflow capabilities of Aldon Lifecycle Manager, with the deployment and release functionality of Aldon Deployment Manager. Together the two provide a powerful, efficient way to manage the application release process, from initial build through final deployment into the production environment.

Aldon's Build Release Management solution is available immediately. For more information, visit http://www.aldon.com/sol/brm/ov/.

About Aldon

Aldon calls itself the ALM company for IT compliance. For more than 25 years, the company has been expert in providing application lifecycle management solutions to ensure that change management, collaboration, and compliance are applied consistently across all areas of IT. Through its user-centric approach to process management, its service, change, and release management products help users focus on what they do best-providing superior services, rapidly developing applications, and efficiently managing your IT operations. Behind the scenes, Aldon helps users increase productivity, accelerate time-to-market, fully understand their IT assets, and easily achieve compliance with regulatory standards. A true testament to Aldon's products is its customer base with over 1,300 companies worldwide in over 70 of the Fortune 100. These companies rely upon our solutions to manage their global IT business and operations processes including application development, network operations, and services management. Aldon is headquartered in Emeryville, California, and has offices around the world serving more than 60 countries.