MKS Adds Test Management to ALM Suite

IT organizations that use MKS' application lifecycle management (ALM) software can now count on the vendor to handle one more aspect of their day-to-day business: test case management. With the recent releases of MKS Integrity 2009, the Waterloo, Ontario, company has delivered a framework that makes software testing--including setting test criteria and storing test results--just another part of an overall ALM strategy.

The way MKS iSeries product manager Marty Acks sees it, there are certain tasks and procedures that IT personnel do that belong on something he calls the "ALM bus."

When a bug is reported and a request is formally submitted to the IT department, that belongs on the ALM bus. When a developer checks out a segment of source code to make modifications, that belongs on the ALM bus. When the changes are re-incorporated into the source code and promoted to production, that also needs to find its way onto the ALM bus.

This ALM bus, of course, is MKS Integrity, which keeps a detailed log of material changes to applications--including changes to traditional RPG-based i OS applications through Implementer, which integrates right into MKS Integrity. This ALM bus (i.e. MKS Integrity) serves as the "single source of truth" for a variety of IT processes, without which a development organization would have difficulty tracking what it's done and where it's been, Acks says.

The new test case management capability provides a framework for managing test requirements, test scripts, and test results, and for hooking up testing tools to the all-important ALM bus. MKS is not delivering software testing tools per se; it relies on best-of-breed vendors such as Hewlett-Packard's Mercury unit and Original Software to provide its customers with the actual tools that provide regression, functional, and stress testing capabilities.

MKS built test case management into its software because it realized that organizations were incurring too many ...

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by Alex Woodie of IT Jungle

Extending Market Wide Leadership with MKS Integrity 2009

On September 16, 2009 MKS Inc. announced the release of MKS Integrity™ 2009. MKS Integrity 2009 is the only solution in the market which delivers the complete range of application lifecycle management (ALM) competence within a single coherent application, adaptable across all platforms, processes, standards, locales and disciplines. MKS Integrity is the ultimate solution for enterprises that must rapidly address the business challenges of software development.

As a cornerstone of this release, MKS Integrity 2009 adds test management capabilities to the solution, providing real-time visibility of test coverage, quality trends and metrics, improved decision support across the project, and the ability to leverage past investments in an increasingly complex development environment.

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MKS at COMMON Directions & Focus Expo 2009

Date: Sep 14, 2009 to Sep 17, 2009
Hyatt Regency, Indianapolis, IN, United States
Presenter: COMMON Users Group


COMMON Directions and COMMON Focus return in 2009 with a uniquely integrated conference experience that promises to offer options to suit all educational needs. In addition to the leading-edge education found at all COMMON conference events, this unique conference experience will also feature an Expo of leading solution providers. Attendees ...

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MKS Announces Effective Date of Share Consolidation

MKS Inc., (MKS) (TSX: MKX) the global application lifecycle management (ALM) technology leader, today announced that the share consolidation described in its news release of July 20, 2009 will become effective at the opening of trading on July 27, 2009.

Letters of transmittal relating to the consolidation have been mailed to all registered shareholders indicating the procedure to follow in order to exchange their share certificates representing pre-consolidation common shares for new post-consolidation common share certificates. Additional copies of the letter ...

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Webinar - Modernize Your Requirements Practices

Gantthead Webinar: Modernize Your Requirements Practices: Incorporate Agile Techniques To Better Meet Business Needs

Developing sound software requirements and managing changes to those requirements is a critical aspect of successful software delivery. But software delivery is often plagued with problems caused by poor requirements practices. Requirements conflict with one another, teams lack visibility into changing requirements and their impact on a project, and frequently, the requirements are disconnected from the real business need.

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Press - MKS Selected for Boeing 787 Software Management

All Nippon Airways Selects 'MKS Integrity for Avionics' for Boeing 787 Software Management

Waterloo, ON - May 12, 2009: MKS Inc. (TSX:MKX) today announced that All Nippon Airways (ANA) has selected MKS Integrity™ for secure software configuration and change management on Boeing 787 aircraft. ANA will be the first airline to operate the Boeing 787.

"Our 'MKS Integrity for Avionics' solution will enable us to leverage the airplane software configuration data across our Engineering and Maintenance divisions, efficiently and securely verifying the integrity of the aircraft when software-related maintenance activity occurs," said Mr. Akio Ito, Manager of Maintenance and Engineering Systems in the Information Technology Services Department of ANA. "We have developed a strong, close working relationship with the MKS team and we look forward to continuing work with that team during this project to deliver an optimal solution, as we get closer now to the beginning of our B787 service."

"We evaluated an in-house development approach versus a 'package as a platform' approach. We then considered carefully the close technical relationship between MKS and Boeing as well as the ability to quickly incorporate data schema changes in MKS Integrity, as we reached our decision" continued Mr. Ito. "We were highly satisfied with the flexibility of the MKS Integrity platform, which enabled the efficient creation of an optimal solution incorporating all of our requirements, workflow and system landscape -- more rapidly than would have been the case with an in-house development project."

David Jones, MKS Managing Director for Airline e-Enabling comments "ANA has a strong and realizable vision for leveraging software configuration data across its organization and systems landscape, and this vision drives further value into our 'MKS Integrity for Avionics' solution. Other Airlines will benefit from that, as we begin marketing the solution globally. Methodology for aircraft maintenance is evolving as modern aircraft contain more software, and 'MKS Integrity for Avionics' co-resides neatly alongside the traditional HW based maintenance systems, providing leverage of existing investments as airlines move forward into managing the additional complexity caused by software decoupling from hardware".

Mr. Jones continued "MKS is now working with other airlines on Boeing 777 Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) content and change management, as well as Airbus 380 software and EFB content and change management. The opportunity for airlines which 'MKS Integrity for Avionics' makes possible is therefore fleet wide management of software related maintenance activity and compliance"

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Webcast - Integrated Change Management and ALM for CA Plex with MKS Integrity for IBM i

Date: May 07, 2009
Time: 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM (EDT)

This webcast is for those in the IBM i (System i/iSeries) community that are using or considering the use of CA Plex for application development.

Learn how organizations using CA Plex can significantly decrease overall development time while adding key audit compliance features, with MKS's application lifecycle management platform - MKS Integrity for IBM i and the new MKS Connector for CA Plex.

The MKS Connector for CA Plex is designed to place CA Plex objects and models under the application lifecycle environment in conjunction with the Implementer component of MKS Integrity for IBM i. This offering ...

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