WEBINAR: Implement End-to-End ALM/SDLC from Customer Request to Delivery with the Omnibus Integration Platform, May 23, 2012, 5:00 pm (IST) / 12:30 pm (BST) / 1:30 pm Germany (CEST) CLICK Here to Join. Presenters: Atanu Majumdar, VP,  Products & Technology, Kovair; Sky Basu, VP, Product Solutions, Kovair.   In this webinar, key learning areas would be:    Why do we need integrated tools? What are the problems of point-to-point integrations? What is the Kovair Omnibus Integration Platform? What are the benefits of integration using the Kovair Omnibus? How does it actually work? – live demonstration of multiple integrations   This webinar is for those who think that a reasonable solution to this problem is impossible! Kovair’s Omnibus Integration Platform can integrate a wide range of multi-vendor tools seamlessly and it is available today for any size of organization.  In the webinar, a complete end-to-end integration scenario will be demonstrated using the following multi-vendor tools – Salesforce.com, Requisite Pro, Eclipse, Visual Studio, ClearCase and Quality Center. Join here.

Requirements Management at Medha Servo Drives for High Reliability Systems This case study focuses on Kovair Software’s implementation of a robust Requirements Management solution at Medha Servo Drives, a railway locomotive controls design and manufacturing company with a vision to become a world leader in these products.Kovair’s Requirements Management solution, which is 100% Web-based, provides a rich and configurable, global platform for capturing a set of requirements, collaborating on their development and tracing implementation back to specs.                                                             Project Traceability ViewClick here to download the case study. 

Kovair Software Inc, and nSolutions Inc, of San Jose, Calif today announced a partnership for enhancing ITSM CMDB automation with nSolutions NOVA product line. This integrated product will provide customers automation of ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) compatible IT Service Management with the Kovair ALM Studio with real time visibility and control of the IT infrastructure through NOVA. ITSM automation is the key to cutting operational costs and increasing business service availability. Kovair's ITSM solutions help standardize workflow to increase operational efficiency and enable end-to-end service delivery based on best practice guidelines of ITIL v3. Integration with NOVA, through Kovair's Omnibus Integration Middleware, will allow customers to create a real time repository of their network attached assets, distributed over multiple geographic locations and across multiple organizations and have full visibility and reporting with Kovair's ITSM Studio Product with its global access capabilities. "The NOVA integration will make Kovair ITSM Studio a very complete product that can compete with any ITIL v3 compliant product in the market today, where many customers are looking for a shift from some of the legacy solutions for newer technology as well as significant cost reductions both for On-Premise as well as SaaS implementations," said Bipin Shah, CEO & Chairman of Kovair. Increasingly, enterprises depend upon IT infrastructure operations to enable the delivery of business services with high availability. The Configuration Management Data Base -CMDB is a key component of the ITIL v3 best practices. Current approaches to create the CMDB are static and largely manual. The result is a failure to update the data consistently. Automation is the only way to provide visibility and control of the infrastructure. The NOVA real time repository integrated with Kovair ITSM Data provides automation and control for an effortless and consistent approach to managing change with an operational CMDB. "We are pleased to partner with Kovair to enhance ITSM automation. By integrating Kovair's ITSM Studio with NOVA's Operational CMDB as the trusted source of resource configuration data, enterprises can transform the IT operations from a reactive management to a proactive control of the operations and policy enforcement," said Harish Rao, CEO of nSolutions Inc. "Businesses benefit from higher consistency of operations, higher availability of business services and improved security and compliance," he added.

  Integrated ALM today is also known as End-To-End ALM in some vendor literatures and websites. However, fulfilling this promise by various vendors using point-to-point integration architecture has been patchy at best. In this paper, we will focus on a new integration technology – ALM Middleware for achieving an Integrated ALM for a mixed vendor tools environment.In a software development process, various tools are used both for managing the development process as well as for the actual creation, testing, building and deployment of software code. Following is a list of such tools some of which are generic (e.g. Document Management) and some are very specific to software development (e.g. Debugger/ Profiler): Multi-Vendor Best of Breed Integrated ALM Tools by ALM MiddlewareTaking a cue from the integration solutions in other industries, most notably financial software, the concept of Integration Middleware addresses all the requirements of Integrated ALM squarely and brings some unique benefits to a development organization. Integration Middleware consists of software components that connect disparate software applications. It consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact. ALM Integration Middleware is the glue software between varieties of different tools used throughout application development lifecycle. It mediates between ALM tools in a number of ways to achieve transformation and routing of data, propagation of change impact by relating data from one tool to another, orchestration of software development lifecycle process flows and integrated reporting. The ALM Integration Middleware technology is based on Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architecture, which has some distinct advantages over any point-to-point integration architecture. Using middleware in an Integrated Tools environment, a development group should look forward to achieving the following benefits of integrations: View artifacts managed by one Tool from another ToolThis is the first goal of any integration. Examples include list of Testcases from the Requirements Management Tool and Requirements from the Testcase Management Tool, or list of design objects from the IDE. The benefit is even higher when multiple artifacts are accessible from a single tool. Create relationships between artifacts for traceability with change impact analysisALM Middleware makes it simple to create Traceability relation between artifacts from various tools. In case of Point-to-point integration where without a central framework only two tools are integrated at a time, there is no way to visualize and manipulate Traceability relations of three or more Artifacts in a single interface. But for ALM Middleware, a central framework allows flexible ways of creating and managing these relationships among multiple (more than a pair of) tools. Moreover, due to its flexibility in relationship management, ALM Middleware promotes multi-tool proactive and reactive change impact analysis. Example includes traceability relation between a Requirement in Requirements Management Tool and Testcase in the Test Management Tool; so that when the Requirement changes in one tool the Testcase in the other tool will be flagged for impact. Automate a process cutting across the tool boundaries and implement a complete ALM lifecycle without a breakTypically, Implementing SDLC Processes for multi-tool ALM requires discipline of individual participants. Such a manual implementation of the process fails after a short time when individuals do not follow it due to high overhead and high cost of retraining for each small change. ALM Middleware, with its built-in process automation capability has a unique advantage of creating a cross tools process and automating that for a transparent no-overhead implementation with a much larger success potential. The typical example is a Requirement that starts life in a Requirements Management tool, is reviewed and approved by stakeholders in a Project Management tool, is implemented by a developer in an IDE, and tested by testers in a Test Management tool. ALM Middleware automates the whole process for all these users even when they are using different tools and may be based at different locations. Manage Projects and Resources across the toolsFor development managers, it has always been a vexing question to answer ‘For a set of Requirements, Changes and Defects what will be the Release date given a set of Resources?’ Alternatively, the questions can be posed as ‘Given a set of Resources and a Release date, what Requirements, Changes and Defects can we put in this release?’ or ‘Given a Release date and a set of Requirements, Changes and Defects, what kind of resources do we need?’ We can make it even more complex by incorporating design and modeling objects, test automation and other ALM artifacts in the mix. Since the artifacts involved are managed by various tools, only an Integrated ALM system will be able to handle this question. Create Cross tools Analytics and DashboardsA Project manager’s assessment regarding the health of a particular development project can be massively flawed unless he/she takes into account the activities in all the tools involved. Analytics and reporting across various tools is very important at different levels including that of the CxO. Once ALM Middleware has all the artifacts and meta information about the artifacts (e.g. not just the Requirement but the information about the Requestor, Type, Priority, Approval status, Approver, Lifecycle status…) in its repository either by replication (where the artifact information is replicated to ALM Middleware repository) or federation (where the tool data is retrieved on demand, avoiding  replication), one can create all sorts of dashboard metrics and reports for those data in real-time. These reports give valuable insight about the whole cross-tool process, which is often impossible or difficult to get. For example, an Integrated ALM system should be able to produce a Test compliance report for the end customer, which shows the list of Customer Requirements, Change Requests and Issues, traced to Testcases and individual Test runs. And finally, the Test run results should show that they have all passed. To produce a report like this requires retrieving information from various tools including Requirements Management, Issues/ Change Management, Test Management and Test Automation. Significantly simpler developmentTo use an example of 10 tools development environment, the ESB architecture needs 10 adapters, just one per tool. This is substantially less than 45 custom integrations between every pair of tools, necessary for point-to-point architecture. Moreover, to add a new tool to this tools environment needs addition of just one adapter, a far cry from coding of 10 integration codes for point-to-point architecture to achieve the same level of integration. Protect InvestmentsALM Middleware is based on a standard set of web service based APIs. Without any special requirement on the tools, ALM Middleware can integrate tools from different vendors, including internally developed tools. This means all the tool investments by a development organization are protected. Best Tools for Best FunctionsALM Middleware allows integration of multiple tools from different vendors for the same function. For example, Requirements Management may be covered by any combination of tools from IBM/ Rational (Requisite Pro, DOORS, Requirements Composer), Microfocus/ Borland (Caliber-RM). What is even better, it can support simultaneous usage of multiple tools from multiple vendors in a single tools ecosystem. This allows organizations to select the best tools available in the market without locking themselves in a single vendor solution. Flexibility of Integration Business RulesIntegration business rules change over time for various reasons including changes in business conditions, group dynamics, and development methodologies. For example, how the Requirements will be replicated from Requisite Pro to Quality Center so that the Traceability relation created in Quality Center may change over time. ALM Middleware allows creation and management of these rules independent of the individual tool adapters. Unlike point-to-point integrations where the logic is hard coded in the integration codes, middleware adapters do not have any embedded business rules. This eliminates the necessity of development resources for changing the integration codes and reduces the change implementation time drastically from weeks to hours. ConclusionsIn this paper, we have discussed that the method of ALM Middleware is a suitable method for implementing Integrated ALM in organizations having or needing multiple vendor tools. Kovair has the ALM Middleware technology called Omnibus Integration Middleware, which is the leading integration technology in the ALM industry today. For more information about Kovair’s Omnibus technology please visit www.kovair.com or contact sales@kovair.com. Each tool name used in this paper is the registered trademark of the corresponding tool vendor. Source: http://www.cmcrossroads.com/cm-articles/275-articles/13984-making-a-case-for-alm-middleware

DevOps is about bridging the often mutually competitive groups, which have conflicting goals, within an IT organization – developments and IT operations. Whereas the development group aims at implementing functional business requirements on the application side, the operations group is focused on non-functional requirements like performance, stability and availability. Further, the development group is interested in quick releases of more and more functionalities; the operations group, on the other hand, prefers fewer releases in order to minimize disruption in operations. The two groups often fail to appreciate each other’s viewpoints with the business emerging as the ultimate sufferer! DevOps, a new movement among the IT communities, involves both operations and development to address the problem, as explained above. Being a new concept, it is yet to have a concrete definition as it lacks consensus. To some, DevOps is the streamlining of the operational part of the application release and deployment process. To others, it is the application of Agile methodology to all IT processes. Yet another group considers it an automation of IT services, especially the programmability of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) Cloud- based infrastructure. As a matter of fact, DevOps encompasses all these connotations, and goes beyond them. Some of the driving factors of DevOps’s success are: Integration of people, processes and tools related to both development and operations groups. Early involvement of operations in the development process. During Requirements Management phase especially, involvement of IT curbs unreasonable demands on the operations during release and deployment. Integration of various tools aids in the creation of a tool chain which may cross the boundaries of operations and development. For example, a Service Ticket generating an Incident, categorized as an Application bug, automatically generates a defect in the bug tracking tool used by the development group. Once fixed, it traces back the path to the Incident as ‘resolved’ and then to closure of the Service Ticket. The whole process can be automated with integrated processes. Use of the Agile methodology for various ITIL process areas, focusing on small frequent releases rather than big bangs. Automation of as many steps as possible by using internal or external Cloud. A good example of DevOps will be to create a test server with an image of pre-installed test automation and other tools; run a complete suite of regression tests- if all pass, dissolve the server – all automated steps! Kovair with its ALM Studio, ITSM Studio and Omnibus Integration Middleware is uniquely positioned to help customers to achieve DevOps from a very early stage. Whereas the ALM Studio is focused on development group, the ITSM studio focuses on operations group and Omnibus on integration of various third-party tools; together they can create the ultimate bridge between development and operations which has been missing for a long time.

Software development today has grown in complexity, with an influx of outsourced development resources, multiple locations, tighter deadlines and a tremendous need for tight coordination between disparate groups.  Add to this, management’s pressures to deliver high quality projects on time and under budget.  The stakes are higher than ever before. The more you grow your IT department, the more software development tools are introduced adding productivity to be sure, but also adding complexity to the mix.  Most companies have a mix of old tools and new tools.  Some are centrally located and some are spread out to multiple continents.  This disconnected environment has resulted in islands of development databases, causing delayed projects and frustrated management. Some companies attack this problem by attempting to write their own tool-database-to-tool-database integrations.  These are fragile- they breakdown whenever new releases are issued, and their upkeep tends to be the low project on the totem pole due to higher priority tasks.  Some tool vendors have developed their own integration or two.  These also tend to be fragile and frequently incomplete. What is needed is a robust, universal plug-and-play integration platform that can fully integrate nearly every development tool ever made on a local or global scale.  No more hand export/import work, no more separate reports, and no more breaks in traceability between tools. Introducing the Kovair Omnibus Tool Integration Platform: Omnibus is a powerful and easy to install middleware solution that handles the simplest integration problems and the most complex ones without asking IT to write a single line of code.  Omnibus is built as an integration hub and works with individual tool adapters that simply make each tool’s database available to the Omnibus engine. Each adapter uses Web Services to make all data communications seamless, no matter where in the world they are located.  This unique architecture allows for all of the integration logic and controls to be located in the hub, giving the user administrator WYSIWYG access to all integration points.  From field matching to event triggers to traceability flows to business process logic, it s all there. Each installation of the Kovair Omnibus also comes with a standard configuration for each tool to be integrated, so the integrations for requirements, test cases, code files, project files and documents are ready to go.  And given the ease of administration, configuration changes can be made on the fly, again, without writing a single line of code. So what does this great platform mean to management?  Plenty.  First, Omnibus has the ability to run multi-tool reports to monitor project health, defect management, on-time delivery and resource allocation.  Omnibus also has customizable dashboards for managers to view colorful charts and lists to stay on top of critical projects.  Is there a bar or pie section out of the norm?  No problem.  Just click on it to drill down to the detail.  In seconds you have an answer that was impossible to find before Omnibus.  The result?  Projects are on-time, under budget and built with a higher level of quality than ever before. Today’s development environment is becoming more complex.  Kovair’s Omnibus is the answer. You may access more information at http://www.kovair.com/downloads.aspx.

Dear Readers: After July, we have not updated you on this page due to several reasons but the primary one being that I have had extensive travel schedules and have not been able to devote the time to write on topics that would interest you.  Many things have happened at Kovair in 2010 and for that I refer you to please read our newsletter for December 2010 that has just been published and is accessible on our website www.kovair.com  at the bottom right of the Home page. In this blog, instead of writing something myself, I would like to provide a link to an interview of mine that was conducted by Samad Aidane of Guerilla Project Management www.Guerillaprojectmanagement.com.  In this interview Samad focused on questions about how Kovair executed a very large 14 tools integration project for Applications Lifecycle Management – ALM at a very large Global IT Services Company that is now in production with about 6,000 developers working from at least four different locations of this company on a totally web based collaborative environment!  Please follow the link below of the recorded interview  in a Q&A format www.guerrillaprojectmanagement.com/global-system-rollouts-focus-on-system-integration-challenges Until next time, best wishes for happy holidays and all the best for a successful and healthy 2011.

  Today, we take great pleasure in announcing the Kovair ALM Studio Product that contains a single data repository package of key applications that include Requirements, Test, Issues, Risk and Release Management along with Project Management capabilities; all of them linked to each other through the Kovair single data repository along with Kovair’s Omniprocess work flow engine orchestrating the desired configurable process for the development life cycle of any applications development project. These core tools from Kovair for any application development effort are further integrated with modeling tools (the Rational Software Modeler, the Visual Studio Team System Architect) the desired IDEs (Eclipse, Visual Studio and the Rational Applications Developer), the automatic test tools (HP Quick Test Pro, the Rational Functional Tester) and the Configuration Management Systems (Subversion, Perforce, Clearcase and Microsoft TFS) with integration adapters built around the Kovair Omnibus Integration Middleware technology. The following graphical representation makes it very simple to comprehend and so let us have the picture tell the entire story!  A close examination of the graphics indicates that with the ALM Studio from Kovair and with its Omnibus Middleware based integrations that are available off the shelf form Kovair, we have easily created ALM 2.0 or an End to End Integrated ALM.  We are pleased to communicate that this is here and now and that Kovair can demonstrate it today and you can consider it for your true ALM 2.0 implementation and go on to improve your traceability, quality, delivery, management visibility and achieve considerable cost reductions in your applications development lifecycle.   ALM Studio from Kovair and with its Omnibus Middleware based integrations   Kovair has just published a Press Release on Marketwire for this announcement which can be accessed from our website at www.kovair.com   Besides the integrated development environment within ALM Studio and outside it with the Omnibus integrations, some of the key features of the ALM Studio are its excellent Requirements Management capabilities for which Kovair is being recognized more and more in the market, considerably enhanced test management capabilities that are now very comprehensive along with integrations with some of the market leaders in automated testing.  Resource Management capabilities for resource requirements and allocations and “What If Analysis” for Release or Project schedules are included in the application.  With Gantt charts and multiple Dashboards, the ALM Studio can also serve as a good tool for Project Resource Management and Planning. For any questions, please write to marketing@kovair.com

On Thursday May 20, Kovair participated in the on line expo organized by Ganthead Publications www.gantthead.com  which they brand as PMXPO for Project Management Professionals. Several on line Expos are being organized by many media companies such as CM Crossroads www.CMCrossroads.com  (where we have participated in the ALM Expo), Tech Target and others that are drawing attendees in the thousands.  This one had more than 9,000 registrations and over 4,600 attendees.  Kovair had about 20% of the total attendees come to our booth.  This is a very efficient and cost effective way to organize Trade Shows where one attends a virtual booth on line and conducts an on line chat with the booth attendants and watches videos or demos for the products and down loads pertinent literature and papers of one’s interest.  Kovair had more than 500 downloads of various white papers, case studies and product data sheets from our booth and even though it may sound self serving, I felt after reviewing at least five other companies’ booths, that we had a very rich collection of literature and relevant information at our booth.  Our new white paper on the subject “Integrated Project Management by Kovair” was the most popular for the download activity. Considering that most of the attendees were Project Management Professionals – PMP, this was expected! In this new White Paper, besides going into some of the key basics of the entire subject of good Project Management Practices, Kovair outlined some of the new features we have recently added in the Kovair ALM-SDLC Lifecycle product such as Resource Management and What If Analysis for looking at various options for allocating Resources or Requirements for Product Releases. It also discusses the capabilities attained by its seamless integration with Microsoft Project Management and all of Kovair’s Reporting and Dashboard capabilities. I should add that Kovair already offers built in capabilities for Time and Task Management in the current product and thus it is easy to create Gant and Pert Charts. For further reading please visit www.Kovair.com and click the “Downloads” tab to retrieve this white paper – “Integrated Project Management by Kovair”.  This can serve as a low cost way of acquiring a fairly adequate PPM tool instead of investing in a full-fledged one! Our Product Research tells us that most companies that own PPM tools from some of the well known vendors do not really use the available capabilities and as such this offering from Kovair probably is worth looking into.  For those of you who did not attend the PMPXPO, it is available in recorded form from Ganthead site by visiting   http://events.unisfair.com/forward.jsp?id=210&eid=560 Please feel free to provide any feedback and as always thanks for taking the time to read this blog.

Here’s a whitepaper that I recently wrote in response to a potential customer query about the value of Omnibus Integration Solutions from Kovair.  It provides a brief summary of the reasons why customers should consider the value of integrations of best of breed tools from multiple vendors using the Kovair Omnibus Integration Bus and Platform. Your ALM and ITSM solutions will be greatly enhanced as a result of these integrations.  I hope you enjoy reading it and look into it further if you think it will be of interest to your company or organization. As always, your comments are keenly sought and appreciated! Click to get your free whitepaper now! Value Propositions for Tool Integrations Whitepaper