Telelogic is announcing a major refresh of three of its core products this week. The new versions of Change (change management), DOORS (requirements management), and System Architect (enterprise architecture) add new support for the kinds of distributed, federated deployments that are becoming commonplace with large, increasingly globally distributed organizations. And Telelogic is continuing to take baby steps in opening up some of its venerated tooling.

The refreshes, which come in the wake of IBM's April announcement of closing the Telelogic acquistion , clearly show a product organization thatis stil in transformation. Obviously, with the ink on the IBM acquistion still wet, there's nothing in this batch of releases that brings the products into the Rational product line, save for some point-to-point integrations. But the changes, which deal with matters like scalability and gradual opening up of new integraitns, are consistent with Telelogic's (and now IBM's) focus to play up its systems engineering business as part of a pursuit, not simply of conventional Apoplicaitn Lifecycle Management, but product engineering as well.

For starters, Telelogic has added support for user administration and authentication through LDAP. Called the Telelogic Directory Service, it provides a new common user access point across multiple DOORS, other Telelogic product servers, and third party products, which is driven by a corporate LDAP server. That’s in place of the dedicated access control mechanisms that Telelogic tools have historically maintained.

DOORS 9.0 has added support of Web 2.0 rich Internet access, meaning you can now have the full DOORS client through a browser. A new product, DOORS/TraceLine, provides a more graphical view of DOORS requirements, which makes a long-awaited first step in helping demystify a tool that has been known for functionality, but not ease of use. And to free requirements information that until now has only been accessible to rocket scientists who know DOORS, TraceLine offers a capability to export requirements diagrams to Visio (which is obviously all over the enterprise) or to Mindjet’s MindManager, which provides ways for annotating context to organization and flow charts. Additionally, support of Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) enables DOORS users that work with Visual Studio to create and maintain traceability between requirements in DOORS and work items in Team Foundation Server via simple drag-and-drop.

At this point, DOORS integrations are still very point to point. Telelogic has not service-enabled it, but it does provide what the company terms “a synchronization framework” which enables DOORS to be linked with tools or apps that do use web services. That’s in addition to the existing C, COM and DXL (DOORS eXtension Language) APIs. Clearly, Telelogic is extending DOORS, adding TraceLine to make requirements models more accessible, but clearly is taking baby steps in opening up the legacy.

Change 5.0 has tightened links with several other Telelogic assets, namely System Architect (SA). DOORS was previously integrated with SA, enabling requirements to be driven by enterprise architecture. With the new link, changes in enterprise architecture strategies, and more specifically, business processes (as represented in EA), are now tied in with change management. (But a disclaimer is called for here: SA is not a full-fledged BPM tool; when we talk business processes, it’s through the eyes of an enterprise architect.)

The integrations are through a web services interface, which supports Telelogic System Architect, Subversion , Telelogic DOORS, Telelogic Focal Point , Telelogic Change, and Generic Synchronization Framework.

Change 5.0 has also expanded support for clustering, multi-threading, and upgraded its replication engine  to provide more scalability; by the way, similar enhancements were also made for Focal Point 6.2, Telelogic’s PPM product.

For instance, a single Telelogic Change server can connect multiple development repositories across the globe, for users of multiple SCM solutions, including Telelogic Synergy , IBM Rational ClearCase and Subversion. Furthermore, the ClearCase integration is now more granular, supporting metadata-based integration in addition to the more traditional and rudimentary file name links. Change 5.0 has also added support for ClearCase’s recent multi-site replication feature, plus Rational’s Unified Change Management (UCM) process, a pattern that expands beyond source code versions to software project constructs (e.g., the artifacts and activities that are associated with the project generating the source code). Integration is through a web services interface, enabling the tool to also connect with other source code control systems such as Telelogic’s own Synergy, or the open source Subversion.

At a more bits and bytes level, Change 5.0 adds support for BSF (Bean Scripting Framework) triggers, opening access to Java classes (e.g.,, JSPs) from scripting languages rather than Java. The benefit is supposedly better performance and more efficient server utilization, especially for advanced customizations involving multiple triggers within the Change 5.0 metadata store.

As mentioned above, the new releases were in the pipeline well before IBM gained formal control of Telelogic. Not surprisingly, they support the theme that IBM gave when it closed the Telelogic acquisition (for now, Telelogic is still in a period of autonomous operation). It’s seizing DOORS systems engineering capabilities to bolster a link into product engineering – an area that has far more headroom for growth than traditional ALM. The operable notion is that in complex engineered products, ranging from automobiles to aircraft to consumer electronics (not to mention mundane items lower in the food chain like hair dryers), software content is growing. In support of this, Telelogic partner BigLever is ramping up its integrations with DOORS, focusing on filling the information gap in requirements management for complex systems with features management (see separate report). And as we comment, it's notable that BigLever is one of two Telelogic partners that has been invited by IBM to display its wares at the upcoming Rational Software Developer Conference .

Not surprisingly, with ink on the deal still drying, Telelogic does not yet have answers on how it will integrate into the Rational stable (as its offerings will become part of the Rational brand). At this point the organizations are still operating at arms length. For instance, Telelogic still operates its own website, although it has added the tagline “An IBM Company.” Telelogic’s products are at least a version away form being “Blue Washed,” which is to say, giving them an IBM look. And obviously, Telelogic does not yet have answers on how it will tie in with Rational’s future direction – most notably Jazz , which is to be Rational’s next-generation ALM integration bus. Of course, Rational has yet to show its hand as well.

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