Coverity announces plans to acquire the build management tool maker.
Coverity is expected to announce its acquisition of Codefast, a software
build management solution provider, on May 27.
Codefast will be the first acquisition by Coverity, which focuses on
automatically improving software quality and security in C/C++ and Java
applications.
Coverity officials said the Codefast technology will be enhanced to take
advantage of Coverity's Software DNA Map
analysis system.
In February, Coverity accepted its first round of venture funding, a $22
million round from Foundation Capital and Benchmark Capital. Coverity used some
of the proceeds from that funding to acquire Codefast, although the companies
did not disclose the value of the deal.
"We dedicated the last 10 years at Codefast developing sophisticated
execution engines to enable both incremental and parallel builds," said
Tom Schultz, former chief technology officer at Codefast. Schultz will
assume the role of director in the Office of the CTO
at Coverity. "Coverity's Software DNA
Map analysis system is the missing piece that will unlock the power of
Codefast's technology and open exciting new build efficiencies for
developers," he said.
Click here to read about Coverity's Scan Project, which uses automated detection to locate security flaws in open-source code.
Industry observers said the Codefast solution does source code scanning,
monitors dependencies and audits builds for both Make-based and Ant-based
applications. The Codefast solution, with its code scanning technology, will
now likely be incorporated into the code analysis market with the Coverity
acquisition. However, some observers said code analysis should typically occur
during the build stage.
Andy Chou, chief scientist at Coverity, told eWEEK: "Other build
management tools treat build systems as black boxes that they invoke and report
on, but they lack the ability to really understand what's going on inside.
Coverity's Software DNA Map technology
provides insight into the inner workings of build systems, including the
processes that are invoked to produce build artifacts and the dependencies
between them."
This is all possible without changing existing build tools or environments,
as Coverity has shown with its deployment of Coverity Prevent at over 450
customer sites, Chou said. "Our unique technology will enable new build
applications such as fine-grained build acceleration, guaranteed accurate build
manifests and unparalleled visibility into the inner workings of build systems,
no matter how complex," he said.
Theresa Lanowitz, founder of Voke, a technology
analysis company, said, "Many development organizations today struggle
with build management and build optimization, leaving a significant opportunity
for innovation from Application Lifecycle Management ... vendors. This is an
excellent acquisition for Coverity. It gives the company a strong product
offering in an emerging ALM segment that is a natural complement to Coverity's
existing strengths in static and dynamic analysis."
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