CA gets 'agile' with $480 purchase of Rally

CA will add Rally's technologies to its own roster of tools and services for project management.

Rally's software and cloud services help teams manage complex software projects and include functionality for collaboration, managing projects and portfolios, diagnostic analysis, and platform integration.

Rally has shaped its products to work in agile development environments, in which teams of developers closely collaborate to build applications quickly. More than two-thirds of companies said that they plan to implement, or have already implemented, agile programming methodologies, according to a recent Forrester survey of 560 IT decision makers.

Based in Boulder, Colorado, and founded in 2001, Rally has more than 11,500 employees in 45 countries. It generated sales of $87.5 million in its most recent fiscal year. Its customers have included defense integrator Raytheon, cable company Comcast, and storage systems vendor EMC.

Although it maintains a considerable business in mainframe software, CA has been branching out to offer a wider range of cloud and systems management technologies. For large teams, CA offers a variety of lifecycle management and change management products.

CA expects to close the transaction by the end of September.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com