CAST recently released a new product called CAST SBOM Manager which enables our users to automatically create, customize, and maintain SBOMs with the ultimate level of control and flexibility. It is available as both an extension to CAST Highlight and as a standalone freemium product for new users.
A logical question that is likely to arise is: Doesn’t CAST Highlight already have great SBOM capabilities? Why would I need CAST SBOM Manager? The simple answer is that each of these user interfaces are designed for different users: CAST Highlight is for leaders to help govern large application portfolios (including comprehensive SBOM generation) and CAST SBOM Manager is designed for SBOM ‘power users’ that need to maintain more complicated SBOMs.
Let’s look at this more closely using an analogy that may be more familiar—the various interfaces offered by retail investment brokerage firms like Fidelity, Charles Schwab, E*Trade, and others.
For example, Fidelity has fidelity.com which offers their trading clients a wealth of information, research, advice, and tools including sophisticated investment trading capabilities. This web site is probably more than enough for most individual investors, especially if they have a more passive investment strategy. Fidelity also offers a free desktop application for all of their clients called Active Trader Pro, an advanced trading platform for more active investors that includes features designed specifically for these ‘power user’ investors like real-time insights, dynamic visual analytics, modeling tools, and more. Both fidelity.com and Active Trader Pro enable investors to make all kinds of trades, even complex ones. However, Active Trader Pro does not include the breadth of information available on fidelity.com such as news, research, advice, and more. This is very similar to the relationship between CAST Highlight and CAST SBOM Manager.
CAST Highlight is a portfolio governance product designed primarily for CIOs, CTOs, and Chief Enterprise Architects that provides several types of software intelligence across any size application portfolio, and it also produces comprehensive SBOMs. For many organizations, the SBOMs in CAST Highlight will be more than enough to meet their needs. Plus, they get full observability across their custom application portfolios including other intelligence such as Technical Debt, Cloud Maturity, Green Impact, and more to help them make smarter decisions. Some organizations and users have more sophisticated SBOM needs, such as the ability to define proprietary components that need to be included in their SBOMs or the ability to define a custom license. This is where CAST SBOM Manager comes in and is designed specifically for these users, but without all the additional insights available in CAST Highlight. It is purpose built specifically for product owners, release managers, compliance managers that are solely focused on maintaining complex SBOMs…the SBOM ‘power users.’
The good news is, CAST SBOM Manager is available to anyone as a freemium product for up to 25 SBOMs. And, for existing CAST Highlight clients with a Complete Insights subscription, they can use CAST SBOM Manager for the same number of SBOMs as applications included in their subscription.
Check out CAST SBOM Manager for yourself now here.
And, take a look at all of the new capabilities included in the Summer 2024 release of CAST Highlight here.
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