News release

HP Helps Businesses Respond to Changing Needs with Agile Accelerator Solution

HP today announced enhancements to HP Agile Accelerator to help customers increase the quality of their applications, enhance productivity, and respond to changing business scenarios quickly and cost-effectively.

Based on HP Quality Center software and HP Application Lifecycle Management consulting services, HP Agile Accelerator manages Agile development projects from proposal to production while helping IT departments better meet their application modernization initiatives.

HP Agile Accelerator helps software development teams improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their business initiatives with predefined workflows, configurations and user reports. Recent enhancements include a built-in resource planning module, which allows development teams to better manage their Agile projects.

“Application development organizations are increasingly adopting Agile development practices to better manage risk and cut development costs,” said Margo Visitacion, analyst, Forrester. “It’s time for testing to become more Agile as well. Traditional end-of-the-life-cycle testing is dead.”⁽¹⁾

Recognizing the need to align applications to business priorities, one of the top initiatives for IT decision makers is to modernize existing legacy applications. According to a recent Forrester report, almost 60 percent of respondents rated application modernization initiatives as “very important” or “important.”⁽²⁾

By using HP Agile Accelerator for application modernization initiatives, customers can:

• Improve business agility with faster response to changing requirements: Change impact analysis allows application teams to understand how a change to a given shared component may affect dependent applications.
• Reduce the risk of application performance degradation by finding defects earlier in the life cycle: With the ability to run security and performance tests in an Agile delivery model, enterprises can prevent the release of faulty software, saving time and money.
• Increase return on investment by delivering quality software early and frequently throughout the application life cycle: With prebuilt process workflows and user roles, application teams can reduce scoping errors and deliver software more frequently.
• Enhance productivity through greater collaboration: Standardized progress reporting improves visibility and communication across multiple teams.

“With varied development projects underway using different methodologies, we needed a solution to accommodate both Agile and non-Agile efforts, yet fit into our existing enterprise architecture,” said Timothy Perry, chief technology officer, Retirement and Protection, Genworth Financial. “By leveraging HP Agile Accelerator with HP Quality Center, we expect to increase efficiencies for each development team, and leverage our previous investments.”

HP Consulting Solutions for Agile

HP offers a broad set of services and expertise to support customer application modernization initiatives with Agile practices, including:

• HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Consulting Services for Agile – comprehensive assessment, design, implementation and management services for ALM and Agile strategies help customers increase the success of projects.
• HP ALM Discovery Workshop for Agile – leverages HP Agile Maturity Model to help businesses define a roadmap and adopt Agile to support business objectives.
• Agile Accelerator Packaged Implementation Services – accelerates time to value for customers by tailoring the solution for individual customer needs and environments.

“With Agile quickly becoming a key methodology for application modernization, it is critical for customers to balance quality, performance and security standards with the need for speed,” said Jonathan Rende, vice president and general manager, Business Technology Optimization Applications, Software and Solutions, HP. “HP Agile Accelerator enhances collaboration among developers, quality assurance and business stakeholders to ensure customers meet their Agile objectives without compromising quality.”

Education and training for HP ALM solutions are available in a variety delivery options including virtual, end-user and instructor led. More information is available at www.hp.com/software/education.

HP ALM solutions, including HP Quality Center, HP Performance Center and HP Application Security Center are offered via HP Software as a Service. More information is available at www.saas.hp.com.

More information about HP Agile Accelerator is available at www.hp.com/go/agile.

Note to editors: Subbu Iyer, vice president of Products, Application Life Cycle Management at HP, will deliver a presentation titled, “Turning Agile Development into Agile Delivery” on Feb. 11 from STeP-IN Summit 2010, a software testing industry conference in Bangalore, India.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com/.

⁽¹⁾ Forrester Research, “A Few Good Agile Testers,” December 2009.

⁽²⁾ Forrester Research, “Think Lean When Doing Application Portfolio Consolidation,” January 2010.

This news advisory contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected operational and financial results; and other risks that are described in HP’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2009. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2010 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.