Paris, December 1st 2003. Merant (Nasdaq: MRNT), global leader in the Change Management and Software Configuration market, and Objecteering Software, leading French figure in the UML modeling field, are pleased to announce their collaboration in the facilitation of process mastery and the implementation of a CMM approach in business. The integrated solution will allow resources to be optimized, team productivity to be significantly dynamized, and the overall quality and reliability of application development to be improved. This type of approach, which consists of evaluating processes and measuring performances, can only be successful on a long-term basis.

Developing a critical application means forecasting, taking risks, anticipating future functionalities, respecting schedules, costs and skills… The CMM is a means of industrializing software production. Rather than managing the progress of developments on a daily basis, developments are clearly defined at the outset, and the necessary evolutions or the causes of problems are anticipated.

A CMM approach allows the maturity of software development processes to be analyzed, with the objective of reducing risks.

" Businesses today understand perfectly the strategic importance of putting in place a CMM approach, in order to track and perpetuate a company's developments and make them more reliable. The improvement in quality, and in the collaboration and coordination of the development, test and production teams is of major importance to businesses," commented Frederic Richet, Marketing Director of Merant. "Thanks to our partnership with Objecteering Software, we are able to provide the integrated software configuration management and modeling solution that our clients require. We will help them capitalize on the best quality levels."

The adoption of CMM helps drive software-developing businesses in their approach to process improvement. This consists of putting the following key sectors in place: requirements definition, change management, project management and test strategy. CMM allows business practices to be divided into five levels of maturity, with level 3 generally being the level targeted.

Process mastery comes through model-driven development. The implementation of UML through a CASE tool allows the support of activities linked to the development of software products necessary to CMM maturity level 3, by allowing requirements gathering, analysis, design and architectural models to be built and by driving application development.

"It would be inconceivable to build a house without first drawing up plans. When applied to software, this idea is strengthened through the methodological support, consistency management and code generation capacities associated with the UML model. Objecteering/UML provides decisive support in reaching CMM maturity level 3, by ensuring complete coverage of the development process, from requirements gathering, analysis and design modeling to code and unit test production. Objecteering/UML's customization possibilities can be used to systematize procedures and know-how specific to an organization, thereby guaranteeing their systematic use and generalization. Our partnership with Merant means we can provide users with a highly efficient solution, so as to favor the growth of their software development maturity", declared Philippe Desfray, Objecteering Software's VP for R&D.