OutSystems offers agile development for the cloud

OutSystems is offering a cloud-based version of its agile development platform for building Web applications.

With the company’s Agile Platform 5.1 release Wednesday, developers can go online and build Java and .Net applications. Agile Platform 5.1 features its own IDE to compete with Microsoft’s Visual Studio and the Eclipse Java IDE, said Mike Jones, vice president of global marketing for OutSystems. By leveraging a cloud paradigm, developers do not need their own hardware infrastructure to build applications.

Most developers using Agile Platform apply an agile approach that accounts for iterative software development, Jones said.

“[The platform is] model-based. It effectively makes the development process incredibly fast,” said Jones. Developers utilize a visual, drag-and-drop metaphor; single-click application provisioning is featured as well, he said.

Agile Platform 5.1 is deployed on the Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). It costs $1.99 per hour per instance for the Professional Edition,which is the most commonly used version. OutSystems’s platform differs from the Salesforce.com Force.com cloud development platform in that Force.com is more of a mashup-type environment, Jones said.

Cloud-based or behind-the-firewall applications can be built with Agile Platform 5.1.

Also in the agile development space Wednesday, ThoughtWorks Studios announced Mingle 3.2, a project management tool featuring searchable Help content for adapting agile best practices. Also highlighted are daily historical reporting capabilities and plug-ins for source control management integrations.

“This new release includes the content, reporting and integration features that will help customers better succeed with enterprise roll-outs of Agile methods,” said Chad Wathington, ThoughtWorks Studios vice president of product development, in a statement released by the company.

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