IBM Rational will standardise its suite of automated
software quality tools on the Hyades open-source platform and is
unveiling concurrently a software quality campaign dubbed
“Continuously Ensure Quality”, or CEQ.
By basing its software quality tools on Hyades, IBM Rational is
making tests and data collected through its tools accessible to
other suppliers through use of the Hyades data model. The focus on
Hyades is intended to provide for team development of software to
ensure quality in the development process, said Geoffrey Bessin,
marketing manager for software quality at IBM Rational.
“You can’t test in quality,” Bessin said. “You have to build it
in.”
Hyades allows the company to build tools for the different roles
in the software development process, according to Bessin.
The Hyades Project was formed in late 2002 and is a subgroup of
the Eclipse open-source project. It is intended to provide
infrastructure for tool interoperability and data traceability to
unify software quality efforts across the application development
and deployment cycle.
IBM Rational is seeking industrywide adoption of Hyades as a
platform for building standards-based software quality tools.
Intel, SAP and Compuware already support Hyades, IBM Rational
officials said.
When asked if the company was seeking support from other
tools suppliers such as Sun Microsystems, Borland Software and
Microsoft officials at IBM Rational said they could not be specific
about any discussions pertaining to others suppliers.
“It’s obvious we need to get a critical mass of companies
adopting Hyades to get to its full volume,” said Serge Lucio,
senior product manager for Automated Software Quality at IBM
Rational
Hyades features a set of data models to enable understanding
among different tools; a facility to collect information about a
system being tested and a set of interfaces providing a single user
metaphor to interact with testing and monitoring tools, Lucio
said.
Standardising on an open-source infrastructure enables avoidance
of supplier lock-in and allows partners to customise tools.
The move to standardise on Hyades coincides with the unveiling
of IBM Rational’s CEQ initiative. This effort is intended to
address the problem of poorly constructed software, a problem that
costs companies billions annually.
CEQ provides a framework for improvements. With CEQ, IBM
Rational will focus on each phase, role, process, and artifact, and
build tools and capabilities for proactive quality assurance.
Aspects of development will be covered ranging from business
process modeling to IT management and monitoring.
The effort is intended to instill a commitment to embrace
quality as a guiding principle in software development and
deployment, IBM Rational said. Key in the effort is the notion that
quality should be built in and not treated as an afterthought.
“Hyades enables us to execute on the CEQ initiative,” Bessin
said.
Paul Krill writes for InfoWorld