RAVENFLOW ANNOUNCES RAVEN VISUAL ANALYZER FOR IBM RATIONAL REQUIREMENTS COMPOSER

RAVEN Visual Analyzer adds powerful analysis and visualization component to IBM Rational Requirements Composer solution for collaborative requirements definition

Emeryville, CA—October 26, 2009—Ravenflow, the leader in visual requirements definition software, today announced RAVEN Visual Analyzer, an integrated plug-in that improves the way stakeholders elicit, specify, and validate business requirements within IBM Rational Requirements Composer (RRC). Ravenflow has achieved Ready for IBM Rational software validation for the plug-in, indicating that the integration meets Rational's integration requirements for interoperability, data integration, and user experience.

"Immediate visualization of requirements is essential for helping to align business stakeholders and development teams," said Michael Loria, vice president of business development for IBM Rational. "The new RAVEN Visual Analyzer plug-in to IBM Rational Requirements Composer provides customers with a well integrated and comprehensive collaborative requirements definition solution."

"IBM Rational's leadership role in making requirements definition accessible to a wider audience represents a state change in this industry," said Susan Boers, president and chief executive officer of Ravenflow. "Allowing business teams to communicate and collaborate better with developers provides maximum leverage in terms of enabling business-driven development. We believe the combination of both products brings robust requirements analysis and visualization capabilities to more stakeholders in an organization than ever before."

IBM Rational Requirements Composer enables visual and textual requirements definition in a collaborative environment, enabling business and IT stakeholders to work more closely together as they capture business objectives and define high quality software requirements. Ravenflow has been working closely with IBM over the last several months to develop the new product offering, which leverages RAVEN's patented Language Engine technology to bring robust requirements analysis and visualization capability to RRC.

RAVEN Visual Analyzer allows users to perform the following key functions directly within RRC:

• Automatically generate and insert business-friendly Activity Diagrams into any of RRC’s requirements editors.
• Analyze use case narratives, correct any errors, and insert the resulting Activity Diagram in RRC.
• Extend RAVEN-generated terms to the Enterprise Glossary that comes with RRC for better consistency.
• Highlight errors in process or use case text to help identify missing or ambiguous requirements.
• Preview RAVEN Activity Diagrams in a separate window, then drag and drop them into any RRC editor.

RAVEN users report a dramatic reduction in the total time it takes to define and confirm business requirements with key stakeholders. Now instead of weeks and months, business requirements can be defined in just a number of days, accelerating project schedules while increasing stakeholder confidence that the application will be delivered as desired. RAVEN also helps produce higher quality requirements, thereby reducing development costs by minimizing the amount of rework required downstream. A short video demo of the software is available at http://bit.ly/ravenva.

As part of the product launch, Ravenflow is offering a series of live webcasts that highlight the new capabilities. Registration for this webinar series is open at www.ravenflow.com.

About Ravenflow
Ravenflow is the leading provider of visual requirements definition software that allows companies to gain better insight, clarity, and quality in their process improvement and application development projects. Leveraging a uniquely business-driven and process-based approach, Ravenflow changes the way companies look at requirements by empowering business analysts to rapidly visualize and produce clear specifications of their business process workflows, business use cases, and business application needs. Ravenflow recently was named the 2009 Partner of the Year by IBM Rational, received the 2009 Jolt Productivity Award, and was selected as a Gartner "Cool Vendor in Application Development."


All products mentioned in the release are trademarks or registered trademarks of Ravenflow. All other trademarks, trade names, and/or product names are used solely for the purpose of identification and are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contact
Adam Frankl, Vice President of Marketing
Ravenflow
650-823-4057
adam.frankl@ravenflow.com