CA Technologies revises Clarity interface
- 19 January, 2012 03:29
- Comments
CA Technologies has updated its CA Clarity Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software with a new user interface, one that the company hopes will appeal to a broader set of business users.
The potential audience for PPM software has expanded in the past few years, said Kelly Blice, a CA Technologies vice president of marketing for portfolio management software and services.
"Five years ago, IT people were used Clarity to manage or work on a project," she said. "Now the business leaders are using it."
Originally, IT departments used the software to manage their IT projects. PPM software can be used to keep track of the work hours spent on a project, to summarize how far along the project is toward completion, to alert managers about impending deadlines, and to get an estimate of how much money is being expended on a project. Now the software has found a second home in many organizations' project management offices, where it can be used to watch over non-IT business projects as well.
To this end, in Clarity 13, CA Technologies has re-engineered the Web user interface of its software in hopes of making it easier for non-IT business managers and analysts to use. The idea is to allow users to get to the data more quickly than they could using previous versions, Blice said.
In particular, the software allows users to create their own dashboards via a drag-and-drop interface, which allows them to highlight the data they are most interested in following. The menus have also been streamlined so that users can get to information more easily, through two clicks rather than 10 or 11 clicks that the previous version often required, Blice said.
The built-in charting capability has been streamlined as well. It now can present information as a Gantt Chart, a type of bar chart used for showing how far along a project is to completion. It can also present project milestones in graphical form, as a visual roadmap.
In addition to a revamped user interface, the software is now integrated with Salesforce.com's Chatter hosted collaboration space, which allows participants to search for other experts in the organization, to collaborate on documents and to follow items of interest, such as ideas, requirements and tasks, from their desktops and cell phones.
Clarity 13 is the first major update of the software since Clarity 12, released in 2010. It is available as both software and as a hosted service from CA Technologies itself. The price of the on-premise version starts at US$125,000, for 100 users. Additional users can be added on a per-seat price. The CA Clarity PPM On Demand service starts at $50,000 per year, for 100 users. Additional users can be added on a per-seat basis.
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
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email CIO
- Follow CIO on twitter
- HP ePrint Enterprise mobile printing solution
- So Long, Silos: Why Multi-Domain MDM Is Better For Your Business
- Removing BPM Silos to Unleash Process Power - 15 Best Practices for Enterprise BPM
- Oracle BPM Suite 11g: BPM without Barriers
- HP VirtualSystem VS3 for VMware - Simple, agile, efficient enterprise virtualisation
-
How to implement next-generation storage infrastructure for Big Data
-
Pfizer's Future Depends on IT Transformation
-
Pfizer's Future Depends on IT Transformation
-
Pfizer's Future Depends on IT Transformation
-
Apple aims iPads at High Schools
-
Implementing Energy Efficient Data Centres
Electrical power usage is not a typical design criterion for data centers, nor is it effectively managed as an expense. This is true despite the fact that the electrical power costs over the life of a data center may exceed the costs of the electrical power system including the UPS, and also may exceed the cost of the IT equipment. Read on. -
Keeping up With Ever-Expanding Enterprise Data - 2010 IOUG Database Growth Survey
A majority of respondents report having performance and budget issues due to exponential data growth. Those companies with the highest rates of data growth, in fact, are eight times more likely than slow-growth sites to be seeing significant increases in their storage budgets. New processes and tools are needed to help organizations take control of the massive volumes of information now moving through their systems. The IOUG survey looked at approaches being taken by organizations to manage their growing data stores, and what still needs to be done. -
Control your Print Environment
In your ongoing quest to maximize productivity and drive down costs, you might be surprised by the savings and greater competitive advantage you can achieve with a fully optimised and well-managed printing and imaging environment. In fact, studies have shown that managing your fleet holistically can save you upwards of 30% on your printing costs. And the savings increase exponentially when the scope of work includes automating your paper intensive workflows. Read more.

















Comments
Post new comment