CollabNet Fosters Group Innovation in the 'Cloud'

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Forge.mil: 3,700 users, 160 projects

The Pentagon started talking to CollabNet about building this sort of system in 2002. Progress was slow until about 15 months ago, when two things changed, says CollabNet chief executive Portelli. First, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the Defense Dept. agency responsible for providing IT and communications services to the White House and the military, was encouraged to move in this direction under the Obama Administration, says Portelli. Secondly, the "notion of centralized cloud computing has became an accepted and understood way of doing software development and deployment," he says. "So the path to reducing the cost of developing defense weapons and supporting IT systems in DOD became clear."

Portelli is no stranger to the Defense Dept. In a previous job he helped streamline the economics of building F-22 fighter planes in the 1980s by introducing the DOD to the benefits of simulation software.

The Pentagon contracted with CollabNet to build Forge.mil in order to build better software faster and cut costs, says Rob Vietmeyer, project director of Forge.mil, which is operated by DISA. The secured site, accessible by DOD personnel and supporting contractors, has 3,700 registered users involved in some 160 projects.

Forge.mil not only helps software developers collaborate, it also aims to cut down on duplication of IT efforts in military branches. Services can check to see if a component has already been developed elsewhere before commissioning it, says Vietmeyer. What's more, it can serve as a hub for software that was developed for the U.S. government and can be legally reused. Until now, different government departments were often unaware of the availability of such programs.

"Major software programs for the DOD took too long and cost too much, and we couldn't rapidly adapt new technologies to mission needs," says Vietmeyer. CollabNet's tools, he says, "give us greater speed and greater agility."

CollabNet says that in general it can offer productivity improvement of 10% to 50% and reduce the cost of software development by up to 80%. That's bound to be welcome news for a military fighting wars on two fronts.

Jennifer L. Schenker is the founder and editor of Informilo, a European technology Web site and conference producer, and a former BusinessWeek correspondent in Paris.

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