BigLever Software™, the leading provider of software product line development tools and services, is delivering a unified software product line framework across the full systems and software development lifecycle. With this innovative yet pragmatic approach and the release of Gears 5.4™, the latest version of BigLevers software product line engineering solution, organizations now have the ability to develop and evolve a product line portfolio, smoothly and efficiently through each stage of the lifecycle, from requirements to design, development and testing.
Product development organizations often employ ad hoc, homegrown software product line (SPL) solutions and methods at each stage of the lifecycle across the organization, creating isolated silos of interest and concerns. As a result, the SPL lifecycle is mired with dissonance between the various stages. The unified framework provided by BigLever Software Gears allows the SPL development process to flow cleanly from stage to stage by eliminating silos and providing common SPL concepts, constructs, tools and methods throughout the lifecycle – for requirements engineers, architects, modelers, developers, build engineers, configuration managers, test engineers and project managers.
“As organizations mature in their understanding and mastery of software product line engineering, the issue of an integrated lifecycle becomes increasingly important,” said Charles Krueger, chief executive officer of BigLever Software. “The product line problem cannot be solved at any one stage. To be truly effective, a software product line approach must harmonize the entire lifecycle, end-to-end. BigLever is leading the industry in delivering a unified SPL framework that provides common SPL capabilities for all tools and all assets across the lifecycle.”
BigLever and Telelogic recently demonstrated the power of the framework by rapidly integrating the Telelogic Rhapsody® Model Driven Development™ environment for embedded systems and software into the Gears SPL framework. “Our mutual customers made it clear to Telelogic and BigLever that they needed an integrated software product line framework and model-driven development solution,” said Greg Sikes, executive vice president, Telelogic Modeling Solutions Product Division. “We have been very successful in integrating Telelogic Rhapsody with BigLever Gears. The Gears solution provides the underlying capabilities needed to integrate and leverage tools and assets across the lifecycle.”
About BigLever Software Gears 5.4
The Gears software product line tool and framework integrates easily into existing software development environments, providing uniform constructs and operations across toolsets, as well as new and legacy software assets. Gears 5.4 is broadly compatible with existing programming languages and compilers, integrated development environments, requirements management systems, configuration management systems, build tools, model-driven development tools, word processors and documentation tools, testing tools, and so forth.
With the release of Gears 5.4, BigLever continues to remove barriers for companies transitioning to software product line practice by enhancing its robust tool and asset integration capabilities, bringing even greater efficiency to the transition process:
* Extended Gears SPL framework APIs for integrating development tools that use proprietary internal data models and databases.
* Expansion of powerful built-in text transformations to ease migration from complex, fine-grained source code variation conventions used in legacy software assets.
* Configurable, programming language-specific “block” constructs to enable straightforward conversion of pervasive, ad hoc source code block conventions into first-class Gears SPL variation points.
For companies interested in taking advantage of the time-to-market and portfolio scalability benefits of software product lines, BigLever Software Gears offers a simple, elegant, integrated solution across the full development lifecycle: one consolidated collection of software assets, one consolidated mechanism for portfolio variation management, and one consolidated system for producing all products in a portfolio.
About BigLever
BigLever Software, the leading provider of software product line development framework, tools and services, dramatically simplifies the creation, evolution and maintenance of embedded or standalone software for a product line portfolio. BigLevers patent-pending solution, Gears, enables software development organizations to reduce development costs and bring new product line features and products to market faster, enabling businesses to more reliably target and hit strategic market windows. BigLever is based in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit www.biglever.com.
