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CollabNet unveils huge HP deal

By Rachel Chalmers
June 11, 2001
© 2001 the451.com

San Francisco - CollabNet has always claimed its SourceCast platform condenses the open source development method into an easily digestible form for the corporate market. Until now, that's been no more than an ambitious claim. This week, the company finally pulled the wraps off a huge deal with Hewlett-Packard - a deal that's likely to become the test case for the use of SourceCast in internal software projects.

HP's 30-seat SourceCast pilot has expanded to include 100 projects and 1,200 engineers in its printing and imaging divisions. Future plans could see 2,000 engineers, 150 partners and 10,000 community members drawn into what HP has dubbed the Collaborative Development Program (CDP). The underlying software is designed to help programmers reuse code and create common data repositories. It handles version control, bug tracking, mailing list archives and Web-based administration.

Besides bringing the speed and informality of open source development to in-house software shops, HP's CDP should help the company transcend geography and overcome the limitations of traditional lines of communication. One of the projects hosted on the CDP will involve eight internal sites and three external partners.

"It's our first true enterprise development network," bragged CollabNet VP of marketing Bernie Mills. "We've always talked about taking the concepts of open source and applying them across the entire spectrum of software development. Oracle was kind of the first foray into the developer resource network for external partners, but here with HP we're taking those same concepts directly inside the corporation."

It's a significant deal for CollabNet, so much so that Mills refused to comment on the size of the contract or even whether it's the company's biggest win so far. (CollabNet is still privately held.) Mills did say that there are other deals now in the pilot stage with the potential to be as big as this one.

A true believer in SourceCast, Mills has long had his eye on the automotive, aerospace and biotech markets. While HP isn't quite in that league, it's certainly the most impressive validation of SourceCast so far. That must be some consolation to CollabNet for the untimely deaths of games partner Indrema and of its own SourceXchange work-for-hire site earlier this year.

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