Corso, a developer of strategic planning solutions in enterprise architecture and strategic planning, today announced launch of its Strategic Planning Platform as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that leverages the cloud to provide world-class enterprise architecture and strategic planning capabilities for managing change and speed to implementation. 

"We offer customers instant access to a working strategic planning environment. We've eliminated the hurdles inherent to owning and managing an IT infrastructure, including software installation, integrations, licensing, upgrades and maintenance," said Martin Owen, CEO, Corso Ltd. "Our goal is to give customers an easy-to-use, readily available strategy and delivery mechanism that uses the most current technology for capturing, analyzing, sharing and publishing data. Our platform gives organizations the tools and support to better use their data to speed decisions and implementation on strategic projects while embracing the needs of the mobile workforce."

Corso's Strategic Planning Platform is a new, unique approach that integrates enterprise architecture, IT and strategic planning into a fully-charged change process that uses new trends in technology to elevate decision-making to a strategic level. This approach unites business and architecture views into one central platform and leverages existing tools and the Web to share information and decision-making across various teams within the organization. The platform is especially suitable for organizations managing large, complex projects that require a flexible and systematic method for managing change and a mobile workforce.  

The Strategic Planning Platform integrates IBM's proven set of Rational tools, IBM Jazz and various social media platforms into a cloud offering.  The platform includes IBM Rational System Architect for enterprise architecture, IBM Rational Focal Point for portfolio management, IBM Rational Team Concert for software and project delivery and IBM Rational Asset Manager® for asset management. IBM Jazz delivers a federated view of information from sources across the organization. Corso also offers integrations to Yammer, Salesforce.com, Twitter and other popular social media platforms.

"In today's world of a growing mobile workforce and shrinking resources, SaaS is the ideal way to help organizations get their enterprise architecture and strategic planning initiatives up and running quickly. Users can give our services a test run before they undertake such a large capital expense and address the needs of their mobile workforce at the same time," said Owen. "Organizations still own and manage their own data while Corso provides the expertise to manage the underlying infrastructure."

Corso's staff of consultants help organizations prepare to transition to a cloud infrastructure. SaaS offerings can be billed on a monthly or quarterly basis and support two models: Pay As You Go (PAYG) or Bring Your Own License (BYOL).  In addition, IBM Rational System Architect will be available as a solo SaaS offering through Cloud One. 

For more information about Corso and the Strategic Planning Platform and SaaS offering, visit:  www.corso.us. For a white paper on the Strategic Planning Platform, visit: http://bit.ly/IBK66p