New CAST Highlight enables mass adoption of Rapid Portfolio Analysis

CAST, a leader in software analysis and measurement, has announced the latest generation of its portfolio analysis platform -- CAST Highlight -- which expands the types of systems it can analyze, unlocking the power of portfolio analysis for companies large or small. Now IT-dependent companies like banks, telcos, and retailers can rapidly inventory and analyze every application in their portfolio, gaining critical visibility while identifying the vulnerabilities behind the increasingly common outages and glitches.

In a year where companies such as NASDAQ, Knight Capital, Lloyds Bank, Heathrow Airport, and American Airlines have suffered costly and embarrassing IT failures, software risk is now top of mind for every IT executive. With CIOs constantly fearing an outage or security breach and application developers stuck spending more time on maintenance than code quality, an increasing number of companies are searching for a quick and easy way to gain better understanding into the health and state of the IT portfolios.

Traditional application portfolio analysis solutions have proved far more complex, slow and costly, than originally expected. The main issues being the collecting and centralizing of source code across multiple systems, CAST Highlight is designed to address this. Its low-cost SaaS model makes it 20 times cheaper than traditional enterprise software, without the need for costly hardware or licenses, and less disruptive for users, ready to deploy in minutes, from any location without the need to transfer source code.

On top of this CAST Highlight has transformed the time required for in-depth portfolio analysis, a process which has traditionally taken years to complete. Now CIOs can now analyze 250 systems in just seven days, rapidly assessing portfolios to uncover vulnerabilities, generate key performance indicators, and build ‘heat maps’ of software risk in your application portfolio in a matter of weeks. Key new features include:
· Portfolio KPIs – To rapidly assess the ‘software health’ of systems against objectives
· Ability to quantify short term risk – Preventing unforeseen glitches and outages
· At-a-glance summary of technology, age, and size of systems – Prioritize where to invest
· Use of standard metrics and industry benchmarks – Comparison against the competition
· Improved Workflow Management – Quickly oversee multiple systems
· Analyze PHP and Objective C applications

“This release expands the type of systems we can analyze and moves us closer to unlocking the power of portfolio analysis for companies -- large or small. As the stakes grow IT executives can no longer operate in the dark and Highlight gives them a fast, scientific solution that was never before possible in the world of portfolio analysis. Since launching in 2011, over 100 companies have gained insight into more than 1,000 applications -- that’s over 500 million lines of code analyzed!” comments Alexandra Szynkarski, CAST Highlight Product Manager.

"CAST Highlight is a game-changer! A long awaited dream of CIOs to gain ultra-quick insight into their portfolios in a simple and secure manner without disruption on teams,” adds Hari Thalapalli, Global Head for Business Consulting, Mahindra Satyam.

CAST Highlight provides users with data on risk levels, software complexity, adaptability, and Technical Debt, allowing CIOs and developers to identify systems that have high risk of failure or outages and prioritize IT investment. It supports a wide variety of coding languages including ABAP, C, C++, Java, VB, VB6, .NET, C#, COBOL, Objective C, PHP, PL/SQL, TSQL & PL1 code.

A FREE evaluation of this latest version of Highlight can be accessed here: http://www.castsoftware.com/products/cast-highlight/free-trial
For more information about Highlight, visit: http://www.castsoftware.com/highlight