Innovation of Kovair Omnibus Integration Middleware, an integration bus for IT, has facilitated resolving several daunting challenges facing both local and global organizations. An Enterprise Service Bus, it provides a vendor-neutral ALM platform, allowing integration of standard SDLC/Application Lifecycle Management tools using Kovair Adapters. Organizations can, thus, utilize tools they own such as Doors for requirement management , ClearCase for configuration management, and Quality Center for test management, or can use custom-made, homegrown products to support various application lifecycle phases by integrating them through the enterprise service bus. This ensures cross-lifecycle transparency, macro and micro-level processes automation and correspondence of activities across disciplines.

Features of the Kovair Enterprise Service Bus-ESB:

• Ability to integrate multiple tools on the bus for the entire development & IT Lifecycle
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)- based
• Supports 2-way synchronization and federation
• Thin adapters - no hard-coded business rules
• High level 'Tool Class'- specific API
• Synchronization of data and relations between objects
• Conflict detection and mediation
• Augments integrated tools’ capabilities for process & traceability
• Comprehensive and user-friendly Web interface
• Third parties can create adapters with API from Kovair

Kovair Adapters

A number of optional adapters are available to enable data sharing with 3rd party products through Kovair Omnibus Integration Bus, including:

IBM / Rational RequisitePro Adapter

RequisitePro is a Requirements Management tool from IBM Rational. This tool can be integrated to Kovair Global Lifecycle product through the RequisitePro Omnibus adapter. This integration allows full automatic synchronization of Requirement items along with their Traceability relations between RequisitePro and any other tool or application connected to Omnibus including Kovair. In addition, Requirement items from RequisitePro can follow a Review and Approval Process as defined in the Kovair Workflow engine.

Quality Center Adapter

Using Omnibus, Integration Bus for IT, Quality Center, the test management tool from HP/ Mercury is integrated with Kovair Global Lifecycle. The Web service based adapter exposes various built-in Quality Center objects including Requirements, Test cases and Defects. The Adapter does not hard-code any business rule but Kovair Global Lifecycle's configuration allows implementation of integration business rules without a single line of coding. The business rules include automatic complete two-way synchronization between Quality Center and Kovair Global Lifecycle.

Third Party Integration Bus Adapter

IBM / Rational Test Manager Adapter

Rational Test Manager is a Test Management tool from IBM Rational. This tool can be integrated to Kovair Global Lifecycle product through the Rational Test Manager Omnibus adapter. This integration allows Test Case items designed in Test Manager to be synchronized with the items in other tools and to be able to trace backward to the originating Requirement items or forward to the Defects generated through the execution of Test Cases. Defects reported against a test run failure can follow a Defect Resolution Process defined in the Kovair Workflow engine.

IBM / Rational Rose Adapter

Rose is a visual modeling tool using Unified Modeling Language (UML) from IBM Rational. This tool can be integrated to Kovair Global Lifecycle product through the Rose Omnibus adapter. This integration allows Rose Design items like Use Cases, Actors, Use case Diagrams, Class Diagrams, Activity Diagrams and others to be in synchronization with the similar items in other tools used in Business Modeling, Requirements Management and Code Development. Moreover Design items from Rose can follow a Review and Approval Process as defined in the Kovair Workflow engine.

Subversion Adapter

Subversion is an open source Software Configuration Management (SCM) tool. This tool can be integrated to Kovair Global Lifecycle product through the Subversion Omnibus adapter. This integration makes Subversion Files and Change sets accessible from any tool or application connected to Omnibus. These Change sets can be linked to any Requirement or Defect item in Kovair. This allows tracing Requirements to the actual source files or Defects to the fixes in the code files. Change sets can follow a Review and Approval Process defined in Kovair. Subversion Files are not duplicated in Kovair Omnibus - file contents are made available on demand through a federation architecture.

Eclipse Adapter

The Eclipse Plug-in for the Kovair Omnibus allows Eclipse developers to access Kovair functionality directly from within their familiar IDE environment. Other Application Lifecycle Management tools such as Quality Center for Test Management, Requisite Pro for Requirements Management and in-house tools that are integrated to Kovair through the Omnibus platform are also accessible for direct user operation from Eclipse through this plug-in. This plug-in is helpful to any organization in providing an enhanced platform for developers where its established processes, tools and practices are seamlessly integrated. The Eclipse Plug-in for the Kovair Omnibus is SOA-based. Kovair built an open Omnibus Plug-in architecture that communicates to individual tools integrated to the Omnibus through Adapters. Any organization can also create plug-ins for their home-grown tools using this open service API.

Sharepoint Adapter

Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 (WSS3.0) is integrated with Kovair Global Lifecycle. This service is designed to allow tracking and processing a variety of artifacts being stored and shared in Sharepoint integration, facilitating a greater collaboration and enable better visibility of artifacts maintained in Sharepoint. The Omnibus adapter for Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 exposes Documents, Lists (custom defined), Contacts, Announcements, Tasks and Issues as entities from Sharepoint and enables them to be actively tracked and managed in the Kovair application. The Adapter maintains a queue of local events, that are triggered from Sharepoint and then forwards those events to the Omnibus Integration Bus for processing. It also allows different tools registered in Kovair to trigger actions with the exposed entities including creation and modification of these items in Sharepoint. The Omnibus adapter for Sharepoint helps to set up the communication between Kovair Global Lifecycle that enables the artifacts to communicate with all other tools that are integrated with Kovair. This integration allows a 2-way communication between Sharepoint and any other tools that are registered in the Kovair application.

Active Directory Adapter

Uses Active Directory as the authentication engine for a single sign-on. Users can optionally use their network user-id and password to log on to Kovair Global Lifecycle. The mixed model allows some users, especially external users, to continue using Kovair Global Lifecycle's built-in security for authentication.

Visual Source Safe Adapter

Visual SourceSafe integration allows Kovair Global Lifecycle users to attach source and other files managed by VSS to individual items in Kovair Global Lifecycle. Within Kovair Global Lifecycle, VSS-managed files can be viewed, checked in and out, history can be viewed and older versions may be retrieved.

Perforce Adapter

Using Omnibus, Integration Bus for IT, Perforce, the Software Configuration Management tool from Perforce Software, is integrated with Kovair Global Lifecycle. The integration covers all aspects of Perforce including Jobs, Change List and Files and makes them accessible from Kovair. It synchronizes the Jobs and Change List between Perforce and Kovair so that these items become visible to the Kovair users. Similarly, by virtue of this integration synchronization, items like Requirements, Issues, Change Management from Kovair are visible to the Perforce users. In addition the integration federates the information about the files in Kovair, so that the actual file contents are made available in Kovair on-demand through Perforce API.

iManage Adapter

Files and documents managed by iManage may be attached to individual items in Kovair Global Lifecycle. From within Kovair Global Lifecycle these files can be viewed, checked in and out, history can be viewed and older versions may be retrieved.

Filenet Adapter

Files and documents managed by Filenet may be attached to individual items in Kovair Global Lifecycle. From within Kovair Global Lifecycle these files can be viewed.

Integration bus Adapters and Add-ons

Add-on product components extend the functionality of the Kovair Global Lifecycle toolset providing enhanced functionality for document management, resource management timesheets and Microsoft Word integration. The plug-and-play components currently available include:

Timesheet Add-on

The Timesheet Add-on enables users of Kovair Global Lifecycle to enter their official time and activity record expended on various tasks spread over several days. Tasks can be attached to any lifecycle object including Requirements, Testcases, Usecases, Issues and IT HelpDesk Software items. Built in Timesheet reports can be generated with custom filters, or custom reports may be created specific to organizational needs such as Accounting or Customer Invoicing.

Word Reports Add-on

Kovair Global Lifecycle's Word Report Add-on is an optional plug-in component for Microsoft Word. This flexible Add-on allows users to create a Microsoft Word Template with all the power of Word's formatting capability. Templates can embed Kovair Global Lifecycle's data either in a single field (e.g. Project Name) or a list form (e.g. List of Requirements of the type Marketing). Once uploaded, templates can generate Microsoft Word document on the fly, populated and professionally formatted with Kovair Global Lifecycle data. This Add-on gives the users flexibility of using a database system combined with the power of multiple formatted documents.

Word Import Add-on

When Requirements or other Entities already exist in a Microsoft Word document, Kovair Global Lifecycle's Word Import Add-on helps in extracting the items from the documents and import to Kovair Global Lifecycle automatically. Due the unstructured nature of the items in a document Kovair Global Lifecycle offers various parsing strategies to the users. From within Word, a wizard based user interface guides the users in defining different strategies, even multiple strategies in the same document. While importing, the rich text of each item is preserved and Kovair Global Lifecycle's rich text editor allows these rich text items to be viewed and edited.

Microsoft Project Add-On

Microsoft Project Add-on helps a two-way communication between Project and Kovair Global Lifecycle. From within Microsoft Project, a wizard based user interface guides the users to create a work break-down structure mapping different Task levels of Microsoft Project and Kovair Entities. Using the work break-down structure items may be exported from Kovair Global Lifecycle to Project, modified in Project and imported back to Kovair Global Lifecycle. The full power of Microsoft Project can be utilized to do scheduling and planning of Kovair Global Lifecycle Entities and Tasks. The same Add-on can be used in a single-click 'Synchronization' in which, based on a pre-defined work break-down structure, items are exported to Project; resource leveling is executed in Microsoft Project; and then imported back to Kovair Global Lifecycle. This allows a transparent way of doing resource management, planning and scheduling from Kovair Global Lifecycle without even opening Microsoft Project.

Visual Studio Add-On

Visual Studio users can access end user functionality from within Visual Studio's IDE. This enables them to stay within their natural development environment and to use their IDE as the Kovair Global Lifecycle interface.