HP set to expand Application Lifecycle Management brand

HP is looking to cut down on the time needed to develop and deploy applications in the enterprise by extending its Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform.

A trio of products are being introduced which the company believes will help developers better communicate on projects, and establish schedules which can cut the time needed to develop applications from months to weeks.

The first of the new additions will be the Application Lifecycle Intelligence (ALI) service which allows administrators to gain a better view of code as developers build an application, leading to better monitoring of the development process.

"ALI is designed to gather all the critical information going on outside the ALM platform in all the different systems that developers are using," said Kelly Emo, director of product marketing for HP's Applications Portfolio.

"What this means is you basically have a layer of management and governance over what your developers are doing, but you haven't changed anything about the way they do their job."

HP will also offer two add-on services for the platform which will be available for an additional cost.

The first, launching alongside ALI, will be Agile Accelerator 5 which is designed for companies looking to move from infrequent, major application updates to ongoing "agile" cycles which add features every few weeks.

Agile Accelerator 5 looks to provide a single collaborative platform where developers in multiple locations can check plans and progress for a single project.

Launching in August will be a Service Virtualisation tool allowing administrators to create sample environments using cloud and on-premise services where code can be tested.

HP hopes to solve common development issues such as the need to test on active platforms or hire an outside developer to create 'stub' environments for testing.

Emo told V3.co.uk that, as a whole, the aim of the ALM update is to better equip enterprises to develop smaller, "composite" applications that use multiple sources of data.

"When you bring the three together, what you see is a toolkit of capabilities designed to help application project managers embrace cloud applications and operational methodology faster," she said.