ARCAD Software and Meridian Group International Form a global Partnership to Launch Release Management as a Service

New agreement allies leading DevOps solutions vendor with global equipment lessor and top provider of IT solutions, services and support.

Chavanod and Chicago, – ARCAD Software, a leading international vendor in DevOps and Modernization solutions, and Meridian Group International, a leading equipment lessor and provider of global IT solutions, services and support, today announced a partnership to launch Release Management as a Service offering worldwide based on ARCAD’s flagship DevOps solution, DROPS.

This announcement follows the recent inclusion of the DROPS solution in the Gartner 2017 Magic Quadrant for Application Release Automation report1.

ARCAD already has a significant footprint in the financial services industry, having rolled out its DevOps solutions in some of the world’s largest banking institutions.

Meridian offers flexible hybrid cloud environments worldwide and a range of managed services over a highly scalable IBM Power and Wintel infrastructure platform, with ISO 27001 accredited data centres across the UK, US, Europe and APAC.

The new Release Management as a Service (RMaaS) offering using ARCAD’s DROPS enables Meridian customers to outsource the maintenance, build, test and deploy their multi-platform applications and optionally host them in the cloud.

With DROPS as its DevOps backbone, Meridian guarantees high availability of applications and rapid, secure delivery of updates. DROPS is used to automate, synchronize and pilot the deployment of any number of applications, whatever the underlying language, operating system or database.

Philippe Magne, ARCAD CEO, said: "Meridian Group possesses a high performance infrastructure and the expert skills needed to deliver Release Management services at scale. DROPS is ideally suited for such evOps services in the cloud as it is entirely multi-platform and technology agnostic".

Magne explains, "Many companies today are looking to delegate the technical management of their applications. Maintaining these systems in-house is a distraction away from the core expertise of most resident IT teams and outside the focus of the business. DROPS give Meridian an unprecedented level of automation in application build and deploy, with the security of rollback on error".

Options for IBM i (aka iSeries, AS/400): Modernization
The demand for Release Management as a Service is particularly acute on the IBM i platform, where it is becoming harder to find and recruit staff with IBM i-specific skills. "Companies need a guarantee that their systems and applications are available 24/7 and optimized for the expected workload", said Magne. "We serve our customers by taking the risk out of software delivery".

Meridian's clients include a large base running IBM Power / IBM i for some of their core applications. Meridian has been investing in capabilities to help these clients update and mobilize their critical business applications.

Ian Pye, Chairman of Meridian Group explains: "Our investments include onboarding new team members possessing critical industry leading skills, and partnering with innovative organizations like ARCAD".

Specifically for the IBM i market, ARCAD and Meridian offer Modernization projects as a Service, based on ARCAD’s Transformer tools for converting IBM i source code and database to modern industry standards, Free

Form RPG and SQL. ARCAD’s DROPS and Test Automation tools are also used to manage versions and ensure the non-regression of the modernized application.
Pye concludes "Increasingly, our clients are challenged with modernizing their critical business applications. Our Global partner alliance with ARCAD Software, and Meridian’s skills and resources, will provide clients with enterprise-class software modernization and delivery services to meet their business goals".

1 Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Application Release Automation,” by Colin Fletcher, Laurie F. Wurster, 27 September 2017

Meridian Group International headquartered in Deerfield, IL, is a privately held independent equipment lessor for all asset types and a top provider of global IT solutions, services and support. Committed to strong customer relationships, Meridian has extensive knowledge and opportunities for helping businesses innovate and grow while managing costs. Operating since 1979, with over 700 employees and locations across Europe, North America, Australia and Asia, discover more at www.onlinemeridian.com

ARCAD Software group is leading international vendor of DevOps and Modernization solutions, supporting multiple platforms including IBM i, UNIX, Linux, Windows and z/OS. Since 1992, ARCAD has built on its specialist IBM i expertise to develop an integrated and multi-platform solution range for Application Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Modernization, Release Management, DevOps, Test Automation and Data Masking. The company operates through headquarters in Europe and subsidiaries in US and Asia, and ARCAD technology is distributed by IBM worldwide. ARCAD solutions integrate with Rational Developer for i (RDi), Rational Team Concert (RTC), GitHub, JIRA, and also open source tools Git, SVN, and Jenkins.
ARCAD’s Application Release Automation product, DROPS, is a standalone solution, but can also be used in conjunction with external tooling such as IBM UrbanCode Deploy, Docker, Ansible, Chef and Puppet. Learn more at www.arcadsoftware.com
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Meridian Contact:
Fran Blumenfeld
Vice President Communications
Meridian Group International, USA
1 847.964.2772
fblumenfeld@onlinemeridian.com
Arcad Contact:
Olenka Van Schendel
VP Strategic Marketing & Business Development
Arcad Software
+33 6 27 63 18 23
ovanschendel@arcadsoftware.com

Meridian Group International
9 Parkway North #500
Deerfield IL 60015

Fran Blumenfeld

This release was published on openPR.