CAST Introduces CIO Dashboard for On-the-Go Application Risk Detox

With so many high profile IT outages dominating the news this year, CIOs world-wide are finding they need to have better insight into the code quality and software architecture of their critical IT applications. Yet with demanding project deadlines and increasingly complex custom software systems, rigorous checking of toxic Technical Debt -- the sort which causes outages and slows down projects -- can fall dangerously low on their to-do lists.

For many CIOs, current software analysis processes make it difficult to find answers to simple business questions about the evolving state of their important software systems -- e.g., which applications are the most vulnerable, which vendors are delivering as promised, and how can we speed time-to-market for new products.

That changes today, with the introduction of a customizable application analytics dashboard for IT executives to monitor their key applications’ performance, security, changeability, and robustness from anywhere in real time. Once set up, the newly-released version of CAST’s flagship product, Application Intelligence Platform 7.2 (AIP) dramatically shortens reviews of critical application risk factors -- which can typically take up days per quarter.

“Finding meaningful insight into structural risks hidden in the multiple layers of complex application architectures is a significant challenge for IT managers,” said Melinda Ballou, Program Director of ALM at IDC. “This capability is notoriously hard to obtain and will become increasingly important as a way to manage software risk for the enterprise.”

CAST’s new AIP release features a dashboard inspired by Windows 8 live-tile, the first of its kind to give CIOs simple, objective, and actionable insight into their critical systems -- insight that drives out risks, improves productivity, and elevates quality. Now CIOs can quickly and easily see top-level analytics of their applications at a glance to aid them in making important business decisions for their organization. And with a new and improved Report Generator, IT professionals can automate fully customizable reports for both Word and PowerPoint.

“With the new level of visibility offered by AIP 7.2, IT executives no longer have plausible deniability to software risk in their core systems,” said Olivier Bonsignour, EVP of Product Development at CAST. “Management and developers can focus on value rather than waste time on needless rework, patches and disasters. Customers have told us they’ve been able to reduce their incident volumes by as much as 54% in critical applications.”

There’s a flurry of improvements under-the-hood of AIP 7.2, which will allow for faster analysis of larger applications while improving the precision and categorization of results. Other updates in AIP 7.2 include:

• Wide range of integrations possible through new REST API
• Simplified application management, delivery workflow and improved architecture checker
• Expanded technology support (Java 7, JSF, Oracle Forms)

About CAST

CAST is a pioneer and world leader in software analysis and measurement, with unique technology resulting from more than $100 million in R&D investment. CAST introduces fact-based transparency into application development and sourcing to transform it into a management discipline. More than 250 companies across all industry sectors and geographies rely on CAST to prevent business disruption while reducing hard IT costs and software risk. CAST is an integral part of software delivery and maintenance at the world's leading IT service providers. Founded in 1990, CAST is listed on NYSE-Euronext (Euronext: CAS) and serves IT intensive enterprises worldwide with offices in North America, Europe and India.

For more information about CAST:

Web: http://www.castsoftware.com
Blog: blog.castsoftware.com
Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/OnQuality