Perforce Software Introduces Perforce Swarm Code Collaboration Platform

Key Points:

• Perforce launches Swarm, a flexible code collaboration platform that enables development teams to meet their goals for faster release cycles, continuous integration and continuous delivery.
• Swarm helps distributed teams improve their Agile practices by collaborating on both pre- and post-commit code, commenting on changes, sharing creative ideas and getting early feedback from continuous integration and deployment.
• Swarm allows flexible workflows, collaboration on code from both Perforce and imported Git repositories, and support for multi-site teams.

ALAMEDA, Calif. (June 11, 2013) – Perforce Software today announced Perforce Swarm™, a powerful code collaboration and peer review platform that enables development teams to work together better and faster, improving both the quality of their software and the speed of their delivery. Using Swarm, distributed development teams can improve their Agile practices, share creative ideas about their projects and get early feedback from continuous integration and deployment of their code.

"In our business, if you're not updating your products constantly you're quickly left behind," said Marc Desfossés, lead tools programmer at Ubisoft. "We work with dozens of different studios to deliver AAA games such as Assassin's Creed 3 and Far Cry 3. Swarm is the key to rapid multi-site collaboration. It lets programmers chime in on each other's code immediately, get the feedback they need when they need it and even review code side-by-side. We've been hoping for a tool like this for a long time."

Whether it's for a gaming studio or a global bank, release cycles are getting shorter. What used to be released every 12 or 24 months may now be delivered on the hour. To get to Continuous Delivery, development teams need to speed up their processes while ensuring high-quality code is provided into build, test and release tools and, ultimately, production servers. While code review has been applied in some organizations with success, until now the available tools have not offered both a great social experience and tight integration with an enterprise-class versioning system that supports distributed teams.

Introducing Swarm

Swarm is a simple web application written in modern web frameworks. It allows developers to personalize their reviews—such as side-by-side or vertical comparisons—and comment right inside the code. Activity streams, project pages, notifications and a rich repository browser enable even distributed teams to make better use of Agile methodologies. Its flexible workflows, hooks for continuous integration and automatic deployment help them optimize their software production lines. Because Swarm leverages the power of the Perforce versioning engine, all comments and conversations are automatically stored along with the code itself, eliminating any extra steps for security, back-up or compliance.

Swarm's key features include:

• Direct and Contextual Code Conversations – Ensure better team collaboration and faster delivery through code snippet comments and conversations, which are stored and always accessible to display the full context of the change.
• Flexible Code Review Workflow – Quickly discover coding errors through flexible peer or designated-person review workflows with pre- or post-commit review options.
• Side-by-Side or Vertical Diff – Conduct code review with a diff tool featuring inline comments and conversations. Perforce and Git – Developers using Perforce Git Fusion can use Swarm to review the code they've submitted from Git repositories alongside colleagues storing code to the Perforce versioning engine.
• Continuous Integration (CI) Hooks – Convenient CI hooks enable users to know whether a change has passed acceptance tests before looking at it in detail. Users can adapt and extend Swarm by connecting third-party tools.
• Automatic Deployment – Swarm can connect new code to existing deployment processes to automatically set-up and run new versions on a staging or production server.
• Open and Extensible – Swarm is easily customizable to Agile workflows and third-party tools.
• Support for Distributed Teams – Backed by Perforce's distributed architecture, teams can collaborate securely whether they're sitting side by side or on different continents.
• Enterprise Support – Perforce technical support was rated best in the industry by a 2012 survey conducted by UBM TechWeb.

"Swarm shortens the path from a developer making a change to customers getting the benefits," said Christopher Seiwald, CEO of Perforce. "By bringing together all the information developers need to deliver quality code and providing it in an interface that doesn't get in their way, Swarm helps teams work in tighter loops to match the pace of today's faster release cadences."

Free for up to 20 Users

Swarm is available today from www.perforce.com. The full Perforce product family is provided free to unlimited users for 45-day team evaluations. Like all Perforce products, Swarm is also free to teams of up to 20 users—including access to Perforce technical support. Additionally, Perforce is provided at no cost for perpetual use and unlimited seats when used for open source projects or by educational institutions.