While the development community is adopting containers en masse for their potential in accelerating the creation and implementation of new code, the traditional enterprise is also moving toward cutting release cycles, albeit at a more calculated pace. CA Technologies Inc. hopes to seize that trend with the acquisition of Rally Software Development Corp. for appropriately $480 million.

Although its name probably doesn’t ring a bell to most, the Boulder-based outfit has emerged as a quiet giant with more than 11,500 employees across 45 countries thanks to its project management capabilities, which provide companies with the means to adopt agile development practices. The cloud-based Rally platform brings together all the functionality needed to accomplish that under a single subscription.

The price includes everything from standard code sharing and communications features for software teams to a high-level planning console that allow decision-makers coordinate work and implement business goals. Rally claims that its service is helping some customers cut the duration of their internal development initiatives by half while realizing similar reductions in project costs.

That value proposition has earned the company a long-list of big name customers including a third of the Fortune 100 and numerous tech firms, who together accounted for a healthy $87.5 million in revenue during the last fiscal year. At more than five times annual sales, CA’s S$480 million buyout bid, which amounts to $19.5 per share or a 44 percent premium over the company’s Friday price, represents a healthy offer that likely won’t meet objections from shareholders.

But Wall Street still doesn’t stand to benefit as much from the deal as the software giant itself, which is gaining a proven agile development platform with plenty of enterprise customers as well as Rally’s consultancy and training business. The combination of the two will put CA in a much better position to help the large and traditionally slow-moving enterprises trying to accelerate their release cycles, an opportunity expected to reach $1.1 billion by 2017.

Incorporating strategy into the roadmap is the obvious next step. CA is already starting to move in that direction, having recently added support for Docker to its core release management platform with the goal of helping developers push out their code quicker. Customers can expect to see more on that front after the acquisition of Rally closes in September.

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