Aldon Opens Up to AIX and Linux with Lifecycle Manager 5.0

by Alex Woodie

At LinuxWorld last week, Aldon unveiled Lifecycle Manager 5.0, a new version of its flagship change management system for cross-platform development. Expected to ship during the second quarter, Lifecycle Manager 5.0 brings the benefit of enabling organizations to run their source code repository on any AIX or Linux server, instead of requiring an iSeries server.

Cross-platform support is nothing new for Aldon. Since the Northern California software company first rolled out its Affiniti product several years ago, Aldon has enabled the management and tracking of development occurring on a variety of operating systems with its change management software. Linux, Unix, mainframe, Windows, and OS/400 developers have been able to track changes and manage development using Aldon's tools, with the caveat that the source code repository remain on the OS/400 server, which has been Aldon's bread and butter platform.

With last week's announcement that iSeries requirement is changing for the first time, Lifecycle Manager 5.0 will enable users to run the source code repository on any Linux or AIX servers (or Linux or AIX partition) as well as on OS/400 servers.

"Aldon Lifecycle Manager 5.0 marks a milestone in the 25-year history of Aldon because it signifies a notable expansion of our multi-platform support," says Dan Magid, president and CEO of Aldon. "In addition to providing core enterprise change management functionalities for diverse development teams, Aldon Lifecycle Manager 5.0 gives users more flexibility to optimize their development infrastructure and, in turn, to ensure more satisfied business customers."

It was no mistake that Magid and his sales and marketing A Team were in Boston--the center of the Linux world last week--for the big Lifecycle Manager announcement. With the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other new government regulations driving double-digit increases in change management system sales, it's in Aldon's best interest to eliminate barriers to sales. And make no mistake: When your company is standardizing on Linux or Unix servers, requiring an iSeries to run change management can be a major barrier to a sale--even though we know it ought not to be in a just universe.

IDC research director Melissa Webster agrees. "Managing the artifacts of software development across heterogeneous environments continues to be a key requirement for most enterprises," she says. "Support for distributed teams--and for the discrete roles within these teams--is another vital capability for enterprise-class SCM systems today."

With Lifecycle Manager 5.0, developers can configure their views to individual work requirements, no matter if they're working in IBM WebSphere Development Studio, Eclipse, or Microsoft tools that are compliant with its Source Code Control Integration (SCCI) APIs. Individual interfaces can be tailored for the different roles people play in an enterprise, including engineers, project leads, development managers, and senior IT management.

Originally slated for availability this quarter, Aldon now says Lifecycle Manager 5.0 will ship sometime during the second quarter. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.aldon.com.