Catapult Public Relations

TASKTOP PROVIDES MICRO FOCUS CUSTOMERS MYLYN-ENABLED ALM SYNCHRONIZATION AND IMPROVED DEVELOPER

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Tasktop extends Borland StarTeam change management features across the enterprise via ALM synchronization and IDE integrations with Eclipse and Visual Studio

VANCOUVER, BC Nov. 29, 2011 â�� Tasktop Technologies (www.tasktop.com), creators of Eclipse Mylyn and a global leader in ALM integration and developer tools, and Micro Focus (LSE:MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, today announced the Tasktop Borland StarTeam Connector. The new connector, available for both Tasktop Dev and Tasktop Sync, provides access to Micro Focusâ�� Borland StarTeam change management assets from within Eclipse or Visual Studio, and enables complete synchronization of ALM servers from multiple vendors and open source projects.

The two companies are demonstrating the Tasktop Borland StarTeam Connector at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit, Nov. 29 â�� Dec. 1 in Las Vegas (http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/applications/). Â Â

â��Tasktop, Borland and now Micro Focus have a shared vision of putting the developer at the center of ALM,â�� said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project. â��We first started working together by way of Borlandâ��s past contributions to the Eclipse Mylyn project. Today, weâ��re thrilled to announce our partnership with Micro Focus, a leader in developer-centric ALM tools. With the integrations that weâ��re releasing today, StarTeam customers will get a first-class Eclipse and Visual Studio experience via Tasktop Dev and can integrate StarTeam with a broad range of third party and open source Agile and ALM solutions supported by Tasktop Sync.â��

Developer productivity is increasingly being obstructed due to interruptions and the need to leave the IDE to update status and complete work. Even with the best intentions, developers often forget to relate the code they have changed to the task they were working on. With the Tasktop Dev Borland StarTeam Connector, developersâ�� work is automatically linked to the task, defect, requirement or custom artifact that the developer was focused on. With Tasktop Sync, enterprise teams using Borland StarTeam can integrate and synchronize mixed and best-of-breed ALM stacks, including HP ALM and HP Quality Center, IBM Rational Team Concert, and two dozen other leading Agile, ALM, and open source tools. It provides single-source traceability and reporting across the tools used for enterprise Agile ALM planning, software development and quality management.

Key benefits of Tasktop Borland StarTeam Connector include:

â�¢ Consolidated Visibility: With Tasktop Sync, organizations can now view all artifacts, custom or otherwise, from third-party tools, bringing them into the same unified presentation as native StarTeam artifacts.

â�¢ Development Efficiency: With Tasktop Dev, developers are able to stay in their IDE where they are most productive, but still participate in the processes and workflows that management needs.

â�¢ Increased Visibility for Management: More accurate and frequent developer status and time reporting provides management with increased visibility for project planning.

â�¢ Enhanced Traceability: Organizations now have the flexibility to create traceability between StarTeam source code and change management artifacts and assets in third-party systems as needed to fit existing processes.

â�¢ ALM Synchronization: StarTeam is now supported by the industry-standard Eclipse Mylyn ALM interoperability framework which provides real-time synchronization, configurable automatic conflict resolution, and support for more than two dozen ALM toolsâ�� tracking and reporting facilities.

â��We are pleased to announce our collaboration with Tasktop around the Borland StarTeam Connector, which augments our next release of StarTeam 12.0 with new capabilities that are often requested by our customers,â�� said Archie Roboostoff, Borland Portfolio Director at Micro Focus. â��Micro Focus is committed to delivering leading edge developer experience, productivity and ALM solution interoperability and we see Tasktop as a key partner in extending StarTeamâ��s capabilities in these areas.â��

Availability

The Tasktop Borland StarTeam Connector, both through Tasktop Dev and Tasktop Sync, will go into general availability on 16 Dec 2011. For more information please visit (http://tasktop.com/borland-starteam). To read the announcement blog post on the Tasktop Borland StarTeam Connector please visit: (http://tasktop.com/blog/eclipse/borland-starteam).

About Micro Focus

Micro Focus, a member of the FTSE 250, provides innovative software that allows companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernization, Testing and Management software enables customers' business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk. For additional information please visit www.microfocus.com (www.microfocus.com) .

Follow Micro Focus on twitter | linkedin | community

About Tasktop Technologies

Tasktop Technologies aims to transform the productivity of software delivery by unifying Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and empowering developers with task-focused tools. Tasktop invented the task-focused interface and created the popular Eclipse Mylyn project, which transformed the developerâ��s IDE experience to center around ALM tool-based collaboration. Building on top of Mylyn, Tasktop has been unifying the ALM landscape with its broad ecosystem of ALM partnerships that connect disparate tools from leading Agile, enterprise ALM and open source offerings. Tasktopâ��s Task Federationâ�¢ technology builds on this ecosystem to unify heterogeneous ALM stacks by allowing developers, testers and managers to work within their best-of-breed tools of choice, while automatically maintaining traceability and visibility across ALM artifacts. The companyâ��s Tasktop Sync provides the only real-time bidirectional and fully automated synchronization between ALM servers. Tasktop Dev is the developer-centric ALM interface for the Eclipse and Visual Studio IDEs, making it dramatically easier for developers to work and collaborate, while keeping ALM tools up-to-date with development activity. For more information visit http://tasktop.com

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Media Contacts:

Christie Denniston

Catapult PR-IR

cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com

O: 303-581-7760, ext. 13

M: 303-827-5164

Kim Karelis

LEWIS PR

microfocus@lewispr.com

O: 617-226-8844

M: 617.955.0353

TASKTOP ENTERPRISE 2.0 OFFERS NEW LEVEL OF ALM INTEROPERABILITY AND CROSS-TOOL AGILE PLANNING

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:28:39 +0000

TASKTOP ENTERPRISE 2.0 OFFERS NEW LEVEL OF ALM INTEROPERABILITY AND CROSS-TOOL AGILE PLANNING

Innovative new Task Federation capabilities leap-frog point-to-point integrations to unify disparate ALM tools within the developer IDE, connecting developers, testers and management

VANCOUVER, BC, March 22, 2011 - Tasktop Technologies (www.tasktop.com), creators of the Eclipse Mylyn open source tools and a leader in Agile Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) integration and productivity, today announced Tasktop Enterprise 2.0, which features new Task Federation^TM capabilities. Task Federation includes bi-directional task synchronization between ALM components (such as HP Quality Center and IBM Rational Team Concert) and cross-repository Agile planning. Additionally, this release includes several new Mylyn connectors and the general availability of Tasktop for Visual Studio.

"When moving to Agile or modernizing the ALM stack, many organizations are finding that the lack of integration between vendors' tools has put their Agile and ALM deployments at risk," said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project. "The ability to view plans that span repositories, and to federate tasks across a wide variety of them with full fidelity bi-directional task synchronization, is a major breakthrough in solving the challenges of integrating Agile methodologies, legacy systems, departmental silos and open source tools. By connecting these tools not just to the IDE but also to each other, Tasktop is creating opportunities for collaboration between teams and between departments that is resulting in significant returns for the enterprise, ranging from increased productivity to more predictability in software delivery to improved application maintenance over its lifecycle."

Tasktop created its task management tools to help developers be more productive by making it effortless for them to organize their work around tasks. Serving as an ALM interoperability suite, Tasktop Enterprise has become the standard for integrating disparate development tools and platforms that are the reality for today's enterprise software development organizations. By providing traceability and knowledge sharing between tools and platforms that are often provided by separate companies, Tasktop helps reduce the complexity and challenges of successfully scaling Agile programs beyond small teams. Organizations using Tasktop are able to integrate and gain added value from heterogeneous systems, improve the happiness and productivity of development teams, and integrate and manage emerging technology platforms, such as cloud computing and mobile applications, into existing development practices.

Task Federation for ALM Interoperability
Tasktop's Task Federation can be deployed to unify an ALM stack. Currently, Task Federation supports IBMs Rational Team Concert (RTC) and HP's Quality Center (QC). Additional federation support will be added for other Tasktop Certified connectors in future releases. Task Federation provides bi-directional synchronization of all key tasks and fields between RTC and QC. In a common use case, RTC has the state needed for planning, while QC remains the system of record for quality management.

Since each Tasktop client has full federation functionality and uses Mylyn's hardened bi-direction synchronization functionality and user interface, the solution can be deployed in a scalable and secure fashion without requiring any new servers. A Task Federation broker can be added to the solution for companies requiring additional capabilities that a server solution can provide.

Task Federation for Agile Planning
The most significant new feature in Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 is the release of the Tasktop Agile Planner for the Eclipse IDE. The Tasktop Agile Planner provides an offline-capable Scrum task board and release planner that can span repositories. For instance, user stories within an Agile planning tool can be shared, tracked and displayed directly in HP Quality Center or a popular open source issue tracker. Cross repository dependencies are displayed in release plans, and Tasktop Enterprise can display and reconcile task status across repositories. All relevant content from a Web-based planning tool, such as burn down charts, are available when connected via Tasktop's embedded Web UI gadgets. All of the cross-repository state is stored in existing ALM tools - there are no new servers needed.

Currently, Agile plans can be displayed from HP's Agile Accelerator and Rally Software (more tools will be supported in upcoming releases). Cross-repository linking is supported for all Tasktop Certified connectors. The Tasktop Agile Planner for the Eclipse IDE is available as part of Tasktop Enterprise. For product owners and project leads, the planner is also available as part of the standalone Tasktop desktop application.

Task-Focused Continuous Integration
As always, Tasktop's commercial efforts have been driving framework and open source tool improvements in Eclipse Mylyn. A notable example is new Hudson tooling, which also supports Jenkins. Developers can now work with Hudson day-to-day entirely from within the Eclipse IDE, monitor and run builds, and inspect results. Accessing build information is instant and available offline from Mylyn. Added automation features include the ability to run tests that failed on the server within the workspace, with just one click. Finally, developers using Tasktop Enterprise's task activation and automatic change set tracking features, resulting in traceability between Hudson builds and the tasks that changed for a given build, providing an unprecedented level of traceability between tasks, source and builds.

New Mylyn Connectors
Tasktop continues on its mission to improve the lives of developers through integrations with the leading ALM tools in use today. Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 includes the following new integrations:

HP Agile Accelerator: This builds on existing support for HP Quality Center and HP ALM to provide both Task List integration and IDE-based Agile planning facilities.
Accept 360: This full-featured Mylyn connector brings requirements and other product management artifacts to the developer's desktop in order to better connect development to planning activities.
SmartBear CodeCollaborator: Tasktop's first code review integration is for SmartBear's popular peer code review tool, CodeCollaborator.
Polarion ALM: Tasktop now offers full support for the Polarion's Track & Wiki and ALM solution.
Hudson/Jenkins: Tasktop has contributed a full-featured Hudson integration to Mylyn, on top of which Tasktop provides traceability with ALM tools such as HP Quality Center. This Hudson connector also supports Jenkins. The integration is currently available in Tasktop Pro and Tasktop Enterprise and will be released in Mylyn later this year.

Tasktop for Visual Studio
Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 includes the general availability of Tasktop for Visual Studio, which brings the ecosystem of Tasktop Certified connectors into the Visual Studio IDE. .NET Developers now can harness Mylyn's functionality, including instant opening of tasks, offline access to the Task List, and a full-featured task editor.

Pricing and Availability
Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 is available now and pricing starts at $199 per-user per-year. To read more about Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 please visit: (http://tasktop.com/blog/news/tasktop-2-0-release) or attend Kersten's Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 webinar on March 31, 2011 by registering at (http://tasktop.com/about/webinars/).

About Tasktop Technologies
Tasktop Technologies is the company behind the Eclipse Mylyn ALM integration framework and its revolutionary task-focused interface technology. The task-focused interface is proven to make developers more productive by showing only the relevant information for each task, dramatically reducing search time and facilitating multitasking. Tasktop Enterprise is the company's commercial product based on Mylyn, with task-focused support for web browsing, time tracking, documents, email, calendars and commercial ALM components. Tasktop also provides consulting, connector development services and training to the growing number of companies adopting the task-focused paradigm and tools. For more information, please visit (www.tasktop.com).

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Media Contact:
Christie Denniston
Catapult PR-IR
cdennistion@catapultpr-ir.com
O: 303-584-7760, ext. 13
M: 303-827-5164

TASKTOP ANNOUNCES IBM RATIONAL TEAM CONCERT

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:15:13 +0000

New connector provides Agile task management and ALM interoperability
for Rational Team Concert

VANCOUVER, June 7, 2010 - Tasktop Technologies (www.tasktop.com), creators of Eclipse Mylyn and a leading provider of task management for application lifecycle management (ALM), today announced the IBM Rational Team Concert Mylyn Connector. The new connector enables Mylyn's task-focused interface technology for Rational Team Concert, which is designed to improve developer productivity by displaying only the source code that is relevant for each work item. This reduces information overload and provides a mechanism for one-click multitasking and interruption recovery. In addition, this latest ALM connector from Tasktop has successfully completed the "Ready for IBM Rational Software" technical validation.

"Rational Team Concert provides a comprehensive and modern ALM experience for organizations adopting Agile," said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop Technologies and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project. "Tasktop now brings the benefits of task management to the growing number of developers using Team Concert. This enables developers to instantly resume their coding session when switching Team Concert work items, automatically track and update time estimates on user stories, and link between Team Concert and more than 50 ALM integrations provided by the Mylyn ecosystem."

IBM Rational Team Concert is a complete Agile collaborative development environment providing Agile planning, source code management, work item management, build management and project health, along with integrated reporting and process support. Tasktop's task management tools complement Team Concert's Eclipse integration by re-organizing the development environment around Team Concert tasks, such as work items. This helps improve developer productivity by automatically presenting only the most relevant source code and project management information associated with each task, making it effortless to switch tasks and recover from interruptions with a single click. The Rational Team Concert Connector builds on Mylyn's integration layer to seamlessly operate alongside IBM Rational ClearQuest and other ALM solutions. Now, Team Concert users can access, prioritize and link work items from multiple ALM systems through a unified personal task list.

"Having Eclipse Mylyn connectors for Team Concert, ClearQuest and ClearCase brings the innovation and productivity benefits of Mylyn's task-focused interface to development teams leveraging IBM Rational's Collaborative ALM platform," said Stephen Lauzon, senior manager, ISV Strategy and Technical Enablement, IBM Rational Business Development. "These Mylyn integrations leverage the OSLC specification for interoperability and exemplify how development teams benefit from the new standard, which enables lifecycle tools to work together."

Tasktop also offers a "Ready for IBM Rational Software" validated Mylyn connector for IBM Rational ClearQuest. The connector allows developers to query ClearQuest to access change requests from Eclipse. Developers can then quickly view and update requests without leaving Eclipse or repeatedly switching to a ClearQuest client or web browser. Teams using ClearQuest can focus the Eclipse UI on only the code that is relevant for each change request and take advantage of task-focused programming productivity. In addition, Tasktop offers connectors for IBM Rational ClearCase, Change and Synergy.

Availability
The Rational Team Concert Connector is included in Tasktop Enterprise and currently available as part of the Tasktop Early Access program. For more information or to evaluate the connector, please visit (http://tasktop.com/connectors/rtc).

About Tasktop Technologies
Tasktop Technologies is the company behind the Eclipse Mylyn ALM integration framework and its revolutionary task-focused interface technology. The task-focused interface is proven to make developers more productive by showing only the relevant information for each task, dramatically reducing search time and facilitating multitasking. Tasktop Pro is the company's enterprise-ready product based on Mylyn, with task-focused support for web browsing, time tracking, documents, email and calendars. Tasktop Technologies also provides consulting, connector development services and training to the growing number of companies adopting the task-focused paradigm and tools. For more information please visit www.tasktop.com.

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Media Contact:
Christie Denniston
Catapult PR-IR
cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com
O: 303-581-7760, ext. 13
M: 303-827-5164