OutSystems Delivers Free Agile Development Tool

OutSystems, a provider of agile software development tools, has announced a new, free Agile Platform Community Edition of its solution to give developers an easy way to create Web business applications and use agile techniques without any vendor lock-in, the company said.

OutSystems said its Agile Platform Community Edition is a full version of the company’s Agile Platform that can be deployed into production for personal use or by small businesses with up to five concurrent end users. OutSystems announced its new release at the Agile 2009 Conference in Chicago on Aug. 24.

“The Agile Platform offers developers an end-to-end solution for the delivery of Web business applications that overcomes the development, delivery and change issues faced by enterprise IT shops when trying to apply agile methods,” said Mike Jones, vice president of marketing at OutSystems. “We anticipate that the Community Edition will lead to a grass roots growth in loyal users of the Agile Platform and eventually new customers.”

OutSystems’ Agile Platform is a unified solution, based on agile methodologies, that addresses the full life cycle of delivering and managing Web applications. It can be used to integrate existing systems, compose and automatically deploy new applications, manage them centrally and drive change during their entire life cycle, the company said.

The new Community Edition provides a small download footprint, a simple installation process, a getting started guide and sample applications. OutSystems also is making available a series of getting started tutorials to explore the Agile Platform’s capabilities for delivering rich Internet applications.

“OutSystems makes agile much easier, but it is important for developers to play around with the platform and discover it for themselves,” said Stefan Meier, associate director of software development at XDx, in a statement. “The Agile Platform Community Edition provides this opportunity, and we can’t wait for more developers to try it and build awareness of how software/IT staff and their business customers can benefit together from the improved communication process, time-savings and cost-effectiveness provided by the Agile Platform.”

In a blog post that supports the OutSystems strategy in releasing its Community Edition, Forrester Research analyst John Rymer said:

“Developers consistently tell us they want unrestricted platform downloads—no time bombs, no forced contacts with the vendor's sales staff, no limited-function versions. … We thought in this era of open source, everyone understood this point about developer downloads. Downloads are a great way to encourage developers to learn your product's ins, outs, values, and issues. But developers learn at their own pace, not on your schedule. Developers need your whole product because they will follow a variety of paths to knowledge, not just the paths that make sense to you. And developers don't want to listen to a sales rep's pitch on the wonders of your software. Let your code do the convincing instead.”