OutSystems has announced availability of version 5.0 its Agile Platform. Based on Agile methodologies, Agile Platform addresses the lifecycle of delivering and managing web business applications and supporting business processes. It can be used to integrate existing systems, compose, and automatically deploy new applications, manage them centrally and drive change during their entire lifecycle.

Version 5.0 extends the Agile Platform's capabilities for building Rich Internet Applications by adding a new business process technology layer which makes it possible for IT organizations to model, integrate, deploy, execute, monitor, and optimize human-to-system processes in synch with the applications that support them. The unified modeling capability streamlines process definition and deployment by allowing the process layer to leverage model artifacts from the application layer.

Agile Platform 5.0's TrueChange engine has been extended to the process layer, enabling self-healing and impact analysis of changes in either process or application objects, while its Embedded Process Automation (EPA) technology includes a new TaskBox feature that lets organizations streamline the deployment of new and changed business processes with automatic task notification, intelligent workflow support, and process documentation.

The Agile Platform 5.0 will ship with a predefined analytical model providing process reporting directly from the defined process management APIs. Agile Platform 5.0 also includes enhancements to its integrated IDE, -- support for in-flight validation; copy-and-paste across a range of model objects; improved support for web service integration; and simplified support for the delivery of multi-lingual applications.

The Agile Platform 5.0 functionality is also available free as part of the Agile Platform Community Edition for creating web business applications and exploring Agile techniques without any vendor lock-in. The Agile Platform Community Edition is a full version of the Agile Platform for building web business processes and applications that can be deployed into production for personal use or by small businesses with up to five concurrent end-users.