Borland Software has announced its new, customer-centric approach to transforming software delivery into a managed business process called Open Application Lifecycle Management or Open ALM.
Borland also outlined its product strategy and unveiled Gauntlet, a new Open ALM product that provides real-time visibility and software quality metrics across the entire delivery life-cycle.
Borlands Open ALM strategy is about offering its customers choice, said Tod Nielsen, president and CEO of Borland, based in Cupertino, Calif.
“Customers dont want to be tied to any particular platform or process,” Nielsen said. With Open ALM, Borland customers can integrate technology from Borland competitors along with Borland technology, and regarding software development processes, “they can go agile, or waterfall, or whatever,” Nielsen said.
“Open ALM is about our commitment to be a positive influence in ALM,” he added.
Marc Brown, vice president of product marketing for Borland, said one of the critical components of Open ALM is “making sure that as we develop we stay open to three things: process, tooling and platforms.”
Indeed, the “open” approach builds on the Borland legacy of providing support for a broad variety of platforms. Company founder Philippe Kahn used to refer to Borland as the “Switzerland” of tool vendors.
“This is totally building off of our legacy,” Nielsen said. “The openness attribute is what Borland has stood for.”
Chris Meystrik, vice president of software engineering at Jewelry Television, Knoxville, Tenn., in a statement said, “What we really find exciting is Borlands commitment to providing solutions that are flexible enough to support our specific processes, tools and platforms.”
Moreover, Meystrik said, “Monolithic approaches to ALM are old news. Open ALM as Borland has defined it is much more aligned with how businesses today are managing the accelerating and adaptive delivery methodologies.”
In addition, Borland has published an Open ALM Manifesto that includes principles such as: You have the right to manage your application life-cycle like any other critical business process; you have the right to remain independent of a vendors agenda; and you have the right to freely choose your software development process.
Meanwhile, Borland announced the availability of Gauntlet, its new continuous build and test automation product.
Brown said Gauntlet supports life-cycle quality management by enabling enterprises to continuously track, measure and improve software quality.
“Gauntlet lets us automate activities companies do today through manual inspection,” Brown said. “Gauntlet lets organizations run their digital assets through a set of Gauntlets, and we have a really good architecture that folks can extend,” he said, referring to both ISVs and corporate developers alike.
“Gauntlet gives us a lot of visibility and extends our test management capabilities,” Brown said. In addition, Gauntlet provides a dashboard accessible through a web browser, he said.
Bola Rotibi, senior analyst with Ovum, in London, said: “The ability to automatically test and measure software quality early and often throughout the delivery life-cycle is critical to helping organizations flip the ratio on the success and failure rate of software projects.”
Borland has enlisted a set of partners that offer technology that supports Gauntlet, as the company is seeking to establish an ecosystem for its ALM offerings.
Open source and commercial integrations for Gauntlet include open-source tools such as Ant, CheckStyle, Emma, Findbugs, JUnit, NUnit and PMD.
Meanwhile, commercial tools support includes Cenzic Hailstorm for Web application vulnerability assessment, Fortify SCA for source code security analysis, Klocwork K7 for automated software detect and prevention, Lint4J for static Java source code analysis and Palamida IP Amplifier for software intellectual property compliance scanning and auditing, Borland said.