A vendor of software development management technology is trying to broaden its footprint in the enterprise market with the latest version of its offering, which now features a “new fundamental architecture” that embeds a third-party open source database, making it well-suited to the development teams of enterprises, said one exec.
Lexington, Mass.-based AccuRev Inc. made available on Tuesday Version 5.2 of its software configuration management (SCM) tool that replaces integration with the company’s own proprietary database with third-party PostgreSQL.
The idea, said Cliff Utstein, AccuRev’s vice-president of marketing and business development, is that enterprises will have available to them a range of third-party database tools for capabilities such as optimizing performance, security, report and scalability across a very large number of developers.
AccuRev’s current customer base is primarily small-to-medium sized businesses, but it is looking to “extend up” from its existing pool of 100 or so enterprises.
“We look to grow that from 10 per cent of the Fortune 1000 market considerably over the next couple of years with this release,” said Utstein.
Basically, AccuRev software is meant to help developers—whether they’ve chosen Agile, waterfall or a hybrid route—at various stages along the development process, such as maintaining version control, change management, configuration management, build, test and deployment.
Besides the embedded PostgreSQL database, version 5.2 — a convergence release that replaces the previous limited releases of 5.0 and 5.1 — introduces a new version of an add-on collaborative workflow and governance tool called AccuWorkflow 2.0.
Utstein said the workflow add-on removes the usual manual steps software development organizations have come to expect, including tracking issues and keeping code synchronized with those issues as they change.
Michelle Warren, founder and president of Toronto-based MW Research & Consulting, said AccuRev’s third-party strategy to go with PostgreSQL, instead of offering its own proprietary database, “should bode well for them, as it opens up more windows of opportunity.”
In general, having an “agnostic” process for software development is valuable, said Warren, as is the ability to deal with the complexity of distributed teams of developers and industry-specific regulatory requirements.
“Staying on top of the compliance changes alone can be tenuous and time-consuming, not to mention confusing,” said Warren.
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