"The goal of Eclipse is to create a universal development platform to enable global enterprises to develop software more efficiently," said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, Inc., as the announcement was made that the Application Lifecycle Framework (ALF) project, an Eclipse technology project and proposed by Serena Software on April 30 of this year, has been approved by the Eclipse Foundation

"Serena is committed to creating solutions that help organizations manage IT change across the application lifecycle," said Kevin Parker (pictured), Vice President of Market Development at Serena. "By leading and driving this effort, Serena is helping to form and shape the outcome of the ALF project and thus the future of the industry, through a framework that allows vendors and customers to maximize productivity from their chosen ALM technologies. We aim to eliminate the shortcomings of point-to-point integrations and provide the interoperability needed to successfully manage customer application lifecycles."

"Projects such as ALF enable vendors and users alike to provide the vision, innovation and resources to enhance the Eclipse platform," Milinkovich added. 

"We are looking forward to watching this technology project develop, mature and create even more opportunities for users to further support their ALM development initiatives," he continued.

The Eclipse Application Lifecycle Framework will extend the Eclipse platform to enable meta-data interoperability and tool choreography that span the entire application development lifecycle. The result will be an Eclipse open source framework that allows ISVs to tightly integrate entire ALM suites or individual ALM products on the widely deployed Eclipse platform, making it easier for developers to manage application changes across the lifecycle, easily and cost-effectively.

Serena is leading a growing community of technology vendors and ALM users that have collaborated on the definition, planning and implementation of this project and are now beginning its implementation. As the ALF project matures, other entities are encouraged to participate as committers, users and developers to assist in the architecture, planning, requirements and testing of ALF and further increase the value proposition of Eclipse for application developers.

The ALF project is now forming Architecture, Requirements and Planning committees and is seeking vendors and customers to participate. The project timeline is being developed and the initial plan would see a prototype version of the framework being made available for testing by customers and vendors around the end of the calendar year. The first full version will be delivered in 2006 by which time a rich ecosystem of partners and vendors, say its proponents, will have formed around the project.

For further information on the Eclipse ALF project: http://www.eclipse.org/alf. 

There is also a newsgroup at news://news.eclipse.org/eclipse.technology.alf.