Polarion

Polarion is a unified application lifecycle management solution where you can define, build, test and manage complex software systems in a unified 100 percent browser-based solution that serves small teams or thousands of users.

Innovate, problem-solve, and unlock synergies across distributed teams. Flexible architecture and licensing enables organizations to go as they grow.

Initially released in 2005, Polarion ALM, Siemen PLM Software’s solution for application lifecycle management, was a relatively new entrant in the market. However, in this short timeframe, the company has been able to gauge industry sentiment well, and as a result was able to design its core offering – Polarion ALM – in line with market demand. Web-based access, collaboration, and low-cost application lifecycle management are the key focus areas of Polarion ALM.

Ovum’s application lifecycle management (ALM) experts recommend that buyers consider Polarion ALM, for the following reasons:
• Polarion ALM provides a well-rounded ALM solution
• Only emerging ALM vendor with impressive Technology Score
• Polarion scored highly on the Customer Sentiment scale
• Impressive market traction…the solution is exactly what the market demands
• License costs are highly competitive

Polarion offers a complete application lifecycle management (ALM) suite to provide greater visibility into the software development process. The portfolio has grown organically, leveraging proven and reliable open source frameworks like Subversion, providing unified solutions that integrate the various disjointed process segments, each of which is typically addressed by a point solution. Therefore, today, the Polarion product provides an ALM suite that:
• Closely integrates ALM modules, facilitated by a solution-wide shared repository.
• Drives ALM with a workflow engine that underpins the whole lifecycle on one platform.

The Polarion solution is a single monolithic application with closely integrated functionality and workflow, which Ovum believes is an advantage over ALM vendors whose solutions have grown inorganically and therefore depend on multiple repositories. Built around Web 2.0, Polarion’s solution has a strong focus on collaboration among distributed development teams, which is exactly what the market demands. Polarion ALM is targeted at application development teams (IT departments) within large enterprises and software development companies, and also product development projects supporting significant embedded software components. A lower-cost solution – Polarion Pro – is available, which may better suit small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Polarion’s impressive performance on the Technology and Customer Sentiment scales led Ovum to assign the Consider rating. The vendor’s ALM revenues are small compared with the market leaders; however, that does not take anything away from the Polarion offering. Polarion ALM merits closer attention from organizations that use Subversion as a repository and are yet to deploy ALM, as well as from organizations engaged in product engineering.