Are you faced with the need to do a software portfolio analysis butfind the prospect daunting given the scattered nature of youroperation? A new SaaS -based offering from Cast might fit the bill. Cast, which specializes in software analysis and measurement, todayannounced Rapid Portfolio Analysis, a cloud-based tool thatcomplements the company's Application Intelligence Platform (AIP),which is an enterprise software analysis measurement tool. TIPS: How to become SaaS-savvy "RPA is a cloud-based offering designed to do the same kind ofthings that AIP does, but instead of looking at one application ingreat detail and monitoring that detail over time, it looks acrossmany apps in a portfolio and provides a high-level assessment ofwhere the risks exist," says Cast Managing Director of PortfolioAnalysis Solutions Peter Pizzutillo. Like AIP, the SaaS offering is powered by a rules engine thatassesses the state of your programs by taking into account softwarecomplexity and industry best practices, but it uses a smallersubset of those rules, Pizzutillo says, 14 versus 28. Even though these tools almost always pay dividends, traditionallycompanies have been "more willing to pay someone to sit in thecorner and flip through printouts than they have been to buy toolsfor this type of analysis," says Jim Duggan, VP of research inGartner's Application Strategy & Governance group. "It's one ofthose paradoxes. "This new cloud offering gives people a way to get started withouthaving to make a big capital investment. It puts a wading pool inplace so people can get started without being heavily committed." Pizzutillo admits as much. "RPA will make it easier for us to getstarted with customers," he says. "They have a notional, subjectivebelief in where their risks lie or where the bad apples may be, sowe're able to, in a week's time, evaluate all their systems andbuild a smart, risks-based approach to how to apply softwareanalysis and measurement to the handful of apps that are drivingthe risk, driving the maintenance costs in their organization." In use, Cast's code analyzers -- which have business rules built in-- are sent to crawl through the customer's source code countingviolations against the rule set, looking for things that should behappening that aren't and vice versa. The results are sent back tothe cloud where they are aggregated into different dimensions. Theclient's code never leaves their facilities. Because it is cloud-based, the tool makes it easier to analyzeprograms that are either scattered across locations or even hostedby third parties. When do companies typically realize it is time for code analysis ? Pizzutillo says there are a handful of common scenarios, onebeing mergers and acquisitions that result in a mishmash of IT systems, some of them redundant,that introduce new risks that are hard to ascertain. When it comes time to rationalize that portfolio, you wantobjective analysis about which programs are more complex, whichones are harder to maintain, which applications are easier to enhance, he says. RPA makes it easy to get going. Another typical usage is in the planning and budgeting process.Companies that are looking to get a better view of theirmaintenance costs, for example, can use the analysis to gauge themaintainability of these systems. The beauty of RPA versus other tools or consulting services isspeed and price. "We're doing 100 apps in a week, where it wouldtake months" with other methods, Pizzutillo says. "We're reducingthe time to value to get analysis done quicker, we're adding anobjective, automated process to assess the technical risk, and at alower price point." A one-time assessment using RPA costs $1,000 per application. "Wejust did 3 million lines of code for a client and charged $1,000for that analysis," Pizzutillo says. Gartner's Duggan says that "once you know you need to do amigration or a consolidation, or need to improve the quality of apiece of code, this kind of offering yields some pretty strongpositives. I don't know of anyone that has gotten into these toolsand didn't get value out of it." Although Gartner doesn't do a Magic Quadrant for this market, Duggan says Cast is a "very consistent provider,with very sound technology that has been thoroughly vetted. Theydeliver what they say they're going to deliver and are realisticabout what they say they are going to do." RPA has been in beta since the end of last year, was soft-launchedin Europe and enters GA this month. Pizzutillo says the company hasa dozen clients using it and many more in the proof-of-conceptphase. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Cryolipolysis Slimming Machine , Fractional Laser Machine, and more. For more , please visit Cryolipolysis Slimming Machine today!
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