Peterborough, NH – April 14, 2015 – The ARCAD Software and IBM partnership today announced the release of a complete and comprehensive DevOps solution for IBM i, providing accelerated and continuous application delivery on the platform.

IBM DevOps tools reduce time to customer feedback through collaborative development, continuous testing and deployment, enabling businesses to seize market opportunities and gain competitive advantage.

This latest offering integrates ARCAD-Deliver for IBM i with Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management and IBM UrbanCode – bringing DevOps benefits to businesses on IBM i, and extending their reach to the cloud in particular.

Philippe Magne, ARCAD CEO, stresses the importance of DevOps to the IBM i community:  “DevOps practices and tools are now mainstream on the majority of platforms.  They bring a massive advantage in time-to-market and system reliability.  The benefits of DevOps go way beyond a simple automation of manual processes – they radically reduce IT cost and risk, and they have a direct impact on the business bottom line.  We are very excited to bring DevOps tooling and technology to IBM i.”

Benefits of DevOps

DevOps is an IT strategy focused on increased agility, continually aligning software development with business goals throughout the cycle.

DevOps works by engaging all participants in the software delivery lifecycle — business teams, architects, developers and testers, IT operations and production.  Software is delivered and tested continuously in frequent iterations, shortening the feedback loop.  The proven benefits of DevOps are higher quality software, faster releases, and improved customer satisfaction (*).

(*) According to a Puppet Labs 2014 State of DevOps Survey – “DevOps high performers deploy 30x more frequently with 50% fewer failures”

ARCAD-Deliver for IBM UrbanCode Deploy

UrbanCode supplies the Deploy functionality in the IBM DevOps offering, with rapid release for mobile, social, big data and cloud.  Until recently this functionality had been available only on distributed systems and System z.

Now, ARCAD-Deliver plugins bring to UrbanCode the specific IBM i technology needed to deploy the many language variants on the platform, manage their dependencies, and check for integrity.

ARCAD-Deliver is part of the ARCAD Pack for Rational and a powerful release management solution in its own right, achieving 100% deployment automation on IBM i – from simple deployment to a single production box, up to complex configurations with multiple production environments.  It ensures traceability and rollback on error, and caters to the specific requirements of ISVs.

Chris Trobridge, IBM Product Manager for Enterprise DevOps Tools, states:  “IBM and ARCAD Software lead the way with DevOps solutions for the IBM i platform. I am very excited with the new plugins from ARCAD Software for IBM UrbanCode Deploy.  IBM and ARCAD DevOps solutions can now address multiplatform organizations who have IBM i. This ensures that development on IBM i can be synchronized from conception to delivery with development on other platforms including System z”.

The combination of Rational Team Concert (RTC), Rational Developer for i (RDi), UrbanCode and ARCAD Pack for Rational, completes the DevOps cycle for IBM i.  “IBM and ARCAD Software DevOps tools now allow IBM i development groups to work seamlessly and collaboratively with developers on other platforms from conception to delivery”, concludes Trobridge.

Magne summarizes the value of ARCAD-Deliver for IBM i shops:   “ARCAD enhances IBM UrbanCode Deploy with comprehensive management of all types of IBM i components, including a fully automated database upgrade process for both classical physical and logical files, and for database tables and views.  This integration makes ARCAD Pack for Rational the state-of-the-art and enterprise choice for DevOps in all IBM i shops”, concludes Magne.

About ARCAD Software

ARCAD Software is leading international vendor in Change Management and Modernization solutions for applications based on IBM i. Since its inception in 1992, ARCAD’s mission has remained to secure, automate and modernize software development on the platform.  ARCAD is an advanced technology partner with IBM Rational, with offices in Europe, USA and Asia supporting 1000+ installations worldwide. The company has built on its methodology know-how and specialist IBM i expertise to develop a wide range of integrated solutions and services for multi-platform Enterprise Modernization, Change and Release Management, Test Automation, Source Transformation and Database modernization.

ARCAD’s technology integrates with RDi (Rational Developer for i), RTC (Rational Team Concert) and now UrbanCode.  ARCAD Pack for Rational is distributed by IBM worldwide (part no. 5725-L13).

For more information about ARCAD software and services, call (603) 371 9074 or visit www.arcadsoftware.com.

Media Contact:
Olenka Van Schendel
VP Marketing
ARCAD Software
603-371-9074 x550
ovanschendel@arcadsoftware.com