DANUBE TECHNOLOGIES SEES STRONG GROWTH/SCRUM EMERGES AS LEADING METHOD FOR AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMNT

Early commitment bodes well for Danube as leading software organizations
adopt Scrum in increasingly large numbers

BELLEVUE, Wash.,– Danube Technologies, Inc., (www.danube.com) the leader in software and training for the Scrum method of agile software development, has seen its 100 percent commitment to Scrum result in increasingly strong demand for its ScrumCORE(TM) training services and industry-leading ScrumWorks® software as large, enterprise software organizations turn to Scrum to manage projects across multiple teams and geographies.

In the last year, Danube has witnessed demand for its training and software rise dramatically. The company has increased its training schedule to include more than 100 courses per year that are conducted globally, and has added additional training staff to meet growing demand. Currently, there are 85,000 licensed ScrumWorks users, while active user registrations of the ScrumWorks Basic tool have averaged more than 4,000 per month in 2008. In addition, Danube recently has closed several large enterprise-level ScrumWorks Pro deals, the latest of which includes a company-wide deployment consisting of more than 2,000 developers and stakeholders at one of the largest technology companies in Europe.

"It's clear that Scrum has emerged as the agile development method of choice for the enterprise – because of its inherent ability to bring various stakeholders together in a truly collaborative way that is both developer- and business-friendly,” said Laszlo Szalvay, president of Danube. "Danube's mission is simple: To foster success for Scrum teams, whether through training and coaching or ScrumWorks.”

Since 2003, when company founders Laszlo and Victor Szalvay first embraced Scrum for the company's own development processes, Danube has remained steadfast in its commitment to the software development method. The company offered ScrumWorks Basic as a free downloadable, Scrum-based agile development tool for the masses in January 2005 – and saw its success as an early industry pioneer and evangelist grow quickly. Twenty-five thousand registered active users later, the company launched its first commercial offering (ScrumWorks Pro), which rapidly caught fire among developers, team managers and C-level executives alike for its high quality, ease-of-use and lightweight Web client. Based on the ScrumWorks Basic tool, ScrumWorks Pro was designed to satisfy the disparate and often complex needs of organizations, from small businesses to Fortune 100 enterprises. The latest release, ScrumWorks Pro 3.1 (see today's release "Danube Technologies Launches New Version of ScrumWorks Pro”) reflects this approach and delivers rich functionality to drive business value while remaining faithful to the Scrum paradigm.

Why Scrum?
Scrum has emerged as the most successful agile development process for organizations, developers and executives alike. Scrum's growing popularity can be attributed to its ability to boost ROI for businesses and bring developers and executives together to align business goals. Scrum is easy to understand and deploy; training is readily available; and it provides the flexible framework large teams need to stay focused as they pursue sprint goals as a team.

"The Scrum framework helps teams become extremely productive. It engages developers to produce the major pieces of an application in a fraction of the time consumed by traditional methods,” said Jim Cundiff, managing director of the Scrum Alliance, Inc. "Scrum also makes defects immediately visible to the team,” added Cundiff. "To put it simply - Scrum improves efficiency and helps organizations get things done.”

You Are The Company You Keep
Danube works with organizations of all types and sizes – from small teams getting started with the free ScrumWorks Basic tool to huge, global organizations that are standardizing to Scrum with group workshops and ScrumWorks Pro deployments. At last count, 54 of the Fortune 100 companies possess licenses for ScrumWorks. Because of its intuitive nature, ease-of-use and on-site deployment model, Danube is the preferred partner for large business and government enterprises that require the privacy, security, compliance capabilities and customization (requirements of most large Fortune 1000 companies) that are worrisome with on-demand, SaaS offerings.

About Danube Technologies
Founded in 2000, Danube provides software and training exclusively focused on the Scrum method of agile software development. The company's ScrumWorksPro and ScrumWorks Basic products are licensed to more than 85,000 software professionals worldwide, making it the most widely used software in the industry for managing Scrum projects. Danube complements its software offering with a comprehensive schedule of ScrumCORE training courses, which are taught globally by Danube's five Certified Scrum Trainers. The company's on-site software delivery model makes it the leading choice for enterprises of all types, including large corporate and government organizations, which require the utmost in security, compliance, ease-of-use and customization. Danube's customers include Adobe, Amazon.com, AMD, F5, General Electric, HP, Intel, Intuit, Kofax, LexisNexis, Microsoft, Motorola, Oracle, QVC, Siemens, and Sun Microsystems. Danube is self-funded and has achieved steady organic growth as Scrum has emerged as the preferred agile method for developers and executives. The company is headquartered in Bellevue, Wash. and has a sales office in Portland, Ore. Please visit www.danube.com or call (503) 248-0800 for more information on Danube.