CollabNet went into public beta Monday with a strategic new enterprise-grade development-Platform-as-a-Service (dPaaS) called CloudForge sodistributed teams can manage and scale cloud-based development using abroad set of tools, application frameworks and deployment clouds.

It's supposed to integrate with cloud services and function as a one-clickfront-end for deploying on a private data center or public PaaS includingAmazon, Joyent, Google App Engine and Salesforce.com's Force.com.

The widgetry offers IT departments centralized role-based security andautomated backup along with the visibility and compliance needed to code,connect and deploy applications within public, private and on-premise cloudenvironments.



CollabNet's own on-premise TeamForge and Subversion Edge source codemanagement installations integrate seamlessly into CloudForge.

The company reckons CloudForge addresses the "glaring need for a secure,flexible and scalable platform to help enterprises gain control of and benefit from hybrid cloud development."

It provides code repository hosting (the ever-popular Subversion and Git),access to hosted and third-party Agile tools, leading commercial and opensource tools and affiliated cloud platforms like Soasta and VMware's CloudFoundry PaaS - whether hosted in the public cloud, private cloud or on-premise environment.

It says this mix of hybrid cloud and lifecycle capabilities will letdevelopment teams leverage the power of Agile processes and DevOpsinitiatives and furnish the enterprise with a centralized view of productivity,cost management and compliance. The widgetry is language- andframework-independent.

More than a year in the making, CloudForge builds on the Codesion clouddevelopment framework now used by a reported 4,000 global customersdaily. Over time it will replace Codesion, which CollabNet bought in 2010.

CloudForge Cloud Services are accessible from within all CollabNetproducts. Initially, a new Subversion Edge CloudBackup service providesseamless Subversion data archiving, redundancy and migration capabilitiesfor any on-premise user of Subversion Edge or TeamForge without leavingtheir desktop environment.
Future hybrid cloud services will become available later this year and mayrange from elastic server provisioning for build and test, to data analyticsservices and access to knowledge communities.

CloudForge's hybrid cloud development platform includes:

• A newly designed collaborative UI for development in the cloud and for the cloud, emphasizing sharing, speed, simplicity and built-in training.
• A developer feed that aggregates development activities in real-time through a streaming, searchable dashboard for easy reference and data access.
• A reporting center with centralized visibility for development managers and IT administrators that focuses on project performance against milestones, coding progress and system/access logs.
• CollabNet App Center for building and managing a cloud development platform through two “App Zones.”
• My Services with easy-to-provision development services included in the CloudForge Public Hosting plan like SCM (Subversion, Git and CVS), trackers (Trac, Bugzilla and DAV) and Agile ALM (ScrumWorks Pro and TeamForge) tools.
• Integrated services include basic (Basecamp, Pivotal, FogBuzz and Lighthouse) and premium (JIRA, Rally and VersionOne) levels.
• Marketplace where add-on services can be purchased from CollabNet’s partner ecosystem including Cornerstone, ALMWorks, BrainEngine, Soasta, New Relic and Zendesk.
• Hybrid cloud deployment.

CloudForge is expected to be commercially available, with enterprisesupport, starting around mid-June or more probably July once stability isassured. Credit card-based per user/per month subscription pricing willmirror Codesion pricing. Figure $6-$32.

Meanwhile, see http://cloudforge.com/try for the beta.