Tasktop Technologies is touting the new 'Task Federation' capabilities of its Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 product, which now includes bidirectional task synchronization between ALM components (such as HP Quality Center and IBM Rational Team Concert) and cross-repository Agile planning.

Also known for its Eclipse Mylyn open-source tools, Tasktop says that this release includes several new Mylyn connectors and the general availability of Tasktop for Visual Studio.

"When moving to Agile or modernizing the ALM stack, many organizations are finding that the lack of integration between vendors' tools has put their Agile and ALM deployments at risk," said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project.

"The ability to view plans that span repositories and to federate tasks across a wide variety of them with full fidelity bidirectional task synchronization, is a major breakthrough in solving the challenges of integrating Agile methodologies, legacy systems, departmental silos, and open-source tools. By connecting these tools not just to the IDE but also to each other, Tasktop is creating opportunities for collaboration between teams and between departments that is resulting in significant returns for the enterprise, ranging from increased productivity to more predictability in software delivery to improved application maintenance over its lifecycle," added Kersten.

Serving as an ALM interoperability suite, Tasktop Enterprise provides traceability and knowledge sharing between tools and platforms that are often provided by separate companies. Developers using Tasktop are able to integrate and gain added value from heterogeneous systems and integrate and manage emerging technology platforms, such as cloud computing and mobile applications, into existing development practices.