Borland re-branded open ALM company

Borland Software Corp has outlined a revamped product strategy it calls Open Application Lifecycle Management, or Open ALM, and launched Gauntlet, a build and test automation product that it acquired when it was still under development last February.
"Customers are very wary of being tied into a particular approach or tool," Borland's CEO Tod Nielsen said in a Computer Business Review interview. "With our Open ALM launch we are saying that everything is open to customers: process, tools, platforms, and measurement and metrics."

AdvertisementHowever, anyone expecting a suite of ALM products that integrate seamlessly with their chosen third-party tools today will be disappointed. Although some of its products can already hook into third-party tools, Borland acknowledged that it has far more work to do on its openness and this is going to be a two-year project.Neither did it announce any commitment to the Eclipse-based Application Lifecycle Framework, ALF, project that seeks a standard for interoperability between heterogeneous vendors' application development tools. Instead, Borland said it will take a two-pronged approach to the thorny issue of integrating with rival ALM tools. It said it will evolve each of its products to a more open architecture based on standards that it said will enable customers to plug in third-party tools. It said it will also work on providing dashboards and web-based views offering ALM metrics based on data from its own as well as third-party ALM tools.It said its new build and test automation product, Gauntlet, is the first product it is launching that was architected to meet its Open ALM vision. Gauntlet comes via a four-person start-up consisting of ex-BEA engineers that Borland snapped up early last year.Borland described Gauntlet as a "continuous build and test automation product", which "supports effective lifecycle quality management by enabling organizations to continuously track, measure, and improve software quality."Customers can use the Gauntlet dashboard to see and report on software quality metrics from a range of third-party and open source testing tools. In the open source space, these include Ant, CheckStyle, Emma, Findbugs, JUnit, NUnit, and PMD; in the commercial space there is support for Cenzic Hailstorm, Fortify SCA, Klocwork K7, Lint4J, and Palamida IP Amplifier.Borland said Gauntlet's dashboards include real-time snapshots and time series analysis of metrics like build performance, unit, or functional test results, code coverage, and project activity. The dashboard could enable management to identify at-risk projects early enough in the lifecycle for changes in scope or resources to make a difference, Borland said.Borland also announced what it calls its Open ALM Manifesto, a "bill of rights" for customers that includes lines like: "You have the right to remain independent of a vendor's agenda" and "You have the right to freely choose your software development process." The Manifesto can be found on the company's web site.