Borland Software Corporation, the global leader for Software Delivery Optimization (SDO), today announced the acquisition of Gauntlet SystemsSM a provider of emerging technology designed to automate quality assurance in the development process. The Gauntlet technology, which is expected to be integrated into Borland’s next-generation ALM platform and Lifecycle Quality Management solution, is designed to introduce and enforce quality and security standards earlier in the development lifecycle, without slowing down the process or hindering developer productivity.
Gauntlet’s technology is designed to detect potential problems before they have a chance to impact other developers by automatically pre-screening all new code against a set of quality guidelines before it enters the build process. This reduces the number of broken builds that can impact team productivity and delay project delivery. The Gauntlet technology is also designed to provide visibility into the overall health and progress of projects, providing development managers with a dashboard that tracks key indicators such as project status, code metrics, unit tests, code coverage trends, as well as other dependencies that influence whether a project is delivered on time, on budget and to specification.
“We formed Gauntlet to address an ongoing challenge that development teams face – the ability to control code quality early in the process when bugs are easier and cheaper to fix, and before they have the potential to impact other people’s work or delay a project,” said Sam Pullara, former CEO of Gauntlet and now chief architect at Borland. “Borland’s focus on both improving developer productivity and optimizing the software delivery process is a great match for our goals at Gauntlet. We’re excited to join the Borland team in its mission to transform the way software is built and delivered.”
The Gauntlet technology, when integrated into Borland’s ALM platform, will provide developers with a virtual sandbox to verify coding standards prior to entering the build management process. The Gauntlet technology is being developed to identify not only traditional coding errors, but also to enforce standards and best practices in other areas such as security, licensing, compliance, code readability, and more.
In addition to source control, the Gauntlet technology will also provide robust business intelligence capabilities for software development teams. By providing dashboards that are automatically populated with up-to-date information from underlying SCM, build and test systems, Gauntlet’s technology can help managers gain more visibility into the development process. Check-in activity, code coverage and test results will be able to be correlated and analyzed, providing a holistic picture of the entire software lifecycle. Using these dashboards, managers can also compare historical trends, which paves the way to establishing target metrics for development teams.
“To reduce costs, improve time-to-market and better serve the business, IT organizations are seeking ways to improve and enforce quality at every step in the software lifecycle, not just in the functional and business process testing phase,” said Erik Frieberg, vice president of product marketing at Borland. “However, without proper tools, management may find it difficult track the impact and source of bad code by person or project, particularly if development is done using off-shored or outsourced teams. We believe the technology that Gauntlet is bringing to Borland will provide management with many of the necessary tools and processes to dramatically improve code quality.”
