Executive talks up Software Delivery Optimization strategy at conference SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Borland with its Software Delivery Optimization (SDO) plan is looking to enable users to manage software projects like a business, Borland’s Boz Elloy, senior vice president of software products, told attendees at the BorCon conference here on Monday.The company seeks to solve problems with software projects that do not meet expectations and are beset with issues such as costly changes, Elloy and other officials have said during the conference this week.SDO focuses on five key points: applicability, potency, predictability, efficiency, and quality in software projects, Elloy said. With SDO, software delivery will be transformed to a managed business process, he said. Application life cycle management serves as the cornerstone of SDO, he stressed. “Netting it out, software delivery optimization is about driving the business value out of software, making sure it does return the kind of benefit to the business that we all know it can,” Elloy said.An attendee at BorCon said Borland was on the right track with its message about overcoming difficulties in executing software projects.“I think it’s a good idea,” said Alan Gile, technical product manager at WideOrbit, a software development house in San Francisco that is working on software to enable the television industry to manage its business. “It’s one of the challenges that we’re currently facing because our project is so massive,” Gile said. Managing changes presents difficulties as does keeping groups such as sales and marketing in the loop on changes, he said.“It’s refreshing to see a company looking at [software project management] as a real issue,” Gile said.Borland, Elloy said, has three different projects it is working on under the umbrella of SDO: Project Themis, Project Hyperion, and Project Prometheus. Project Themis focuses on teamwork infrastructure. The company in the first half of 2005 plans a product delivery focused on Themis.Project Hyperion provides visibility and predictability and featuring decision support. It also features portfolio and resource management as well as process automation.Project Prometheus, which Elloy described as ERP for software delivery, manages external forces and runs software projects as a business. Elloy did not provide specific product details about Hyperion or Prometheus. The Themis package for Java-based development will feature CaliberRM, the Together modeling product, StarTeam configuration management, Optimizeit performance testing, and the JBuilder Java IDE. A subsequent version for Microsoft developers also is planned.Borland at the show also introduced JBuilder 2005, which features an embedded CaliberRM client for linking requirements directly to source code. Software Development