Gathering data about what's happening in your data center is well-defined. Gathering data about what's happening in a globally distributed development team, using different tools and writing to different platforms, has been more problematic. CollabNet CEO Bill Portelli, in speaking with me about today's announced acquisition of Danube Technologies (makers of the ScrumWorks Pro agile project management software), described how combining IT ops data with so-called "developer operations" data can save organizations big dollars. Often, IT operations teams get singular development stacks to deploy, which create what Portelli called "spiraling and recurring investments in one-off people, process and technology." While data center consolidation and virtualization can drive business value, real gains still can be made in "application rationalization," the move toward certified infrastructure stacks that will reduce the costs of application monitoring, hardware, servers and people. A company's best system architects and IT operations personnel create these certified stacks and make them available to development teams early in the design process. The stacks, Portelli explained, are backed up by the architects and IT personnel, with whom developers can collaborate with respect to design decisions, implementation and more. In essence, he said, once applications get to the deployment stage, it is understood they will work in the data center due to what he called the "correct by construction" development process. The end result is more streamlined development, higher-quality applications, more interoperability and dramatically reduced costs of operations and lifecycle support. Some organizations go so far as to hire people knowledgable in the certified stacks, which continues to drive this collaborative behavior.