A new face to Compuware Uniface

January 29th, 2010

Towards the end of last year the Compuware Uniface team did something dynamic and ‘out there’. This is unusual enough in the IT world, but it’s particularly unexpected coming from a company that has always been as conservative as a chunky-knit cardigan when it comes to marketing. 

In December, the Uniface team launched its “Badass Squares” viral marketing campaign: reworking the iconic ‘baddies walking out to jangly soundtrack’ scene from Quentin Tarantino’s film “Reservoir Dogs” with a cast of, er, Uniface developers (including customers as well as key developers of the product).

Why? Firstly to both promote its up and coming user conference (www.icu2010.com , 2 February 2010) and secondly to show a younger more switched-on generation of developers, that developing in Uniface could be just as cool and desirable. 

Did it work? Well, it may not push all the right buttons, but it certainly got them recognised, and the company does, at least, deserve points for trying to do something different and noteworthy.

I for one have long criticised Compuware for being a vendor that has been well endowed with a strong portfolio of quality products, but has lacked the marketing flair and ingenuity to really reflect the strength of its value proposition.

Take the rebranding of Compuware 2.0 and the tag line “we make IT rock around the world” back in May 2008. That was considered “old and lagging” even as it was announced.

However, being a badass square developer is the Uniface team’s baby. Compuware Uniface, now running under its own steam as a separate business subsidiary to the parent company Compuware, is growing up fast and looking not to make the same mistakes as its middle-aged parent.

Okay so I personally would have liked to have watched something that had a better gender spread and, in keeping with my analyst profession, professed more of the business value statements. But that’s not to say that Uniface haven’t done their homework in choosing a viral marketing strategy that offers a more visual, universally understood format that is quirky, fun and different, and, as a result, is more likely to be passed on. 

In other words, what it loses in detailed Uniface messaging, it gains in succinct visual representation. And as an exercise in generating noise and piquing people’s interest it certainly seems to be working. The company has reported almost 1,000 visits to www.badasssquares.com in less than a month, with hits from 32 countries.

More importantly, the badass squares campaign aims to drive interest in the Uniface development platform. The next release of the product is Uniface 9.4 with its focus on Rich Internet/Interactive Application, and Web 2.0 development is due for general commercial release at the end of March.

This is the release that will have the most appeal to a developer community that is attuned to delivering engagement- and experience-fuelled applications using the latest social computing and unified communication technology. The very audience, in other words, that the company is after.

The signs for Uniface 9.4 are very promising, with clients already winning and delivering RIA based work against the controlled release version. 

I might also have argued for a campaign that reflects better “discipline” as a cool and desirable trait for truly skilled development. It might not be sexy, but the industry has stored up trouble for itself in the past – and continues to do so – by ignoring the need to be more controlled. The Uniface team are well aware of this and do appear to have the right supporting messages behind the scenes to back the benefits and discipline of the Uniface platform.

In short, as a “sit up and get noticed” ploy then this viral campaign gets the thumb ups.  Compuware’s newest offspring is finally addressing a criticism that many of us in the industry have levelled at the parent company in a way that is more dynamic, tongue in cheek and a whole lot more modern than their roots and perceived company culture would have them traditionally do. As a campaign to spark interest and inquisitiveness from alternative quarters, such as the newer generation of developers more at home with richer visual experience and engagements and social computing interactions and networks, it potentially hits the mark, too. However, it will only ultimately be deemed a success if it can sustain the level of engagement and get onto the radar of those with the purchasing budgets. All this will depend on the company’s ability to reflect the wider needs of both the IT organisation and their business customers in Uniface’s value proposition.

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Micro Focus shapes up well with the backing of the market

December 7th, 2009

Oscar Wilde famously wrote: To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. So Micro Focus losing their CEO on 9 September 2009 immediately following the completion of the acquisition of Borland and Compuware’s Automated Software Quality (ASQ) business was less than ideal, some may think.

Was former CEO Stephen Kelly perhaps not fully behind the purchases? Were there inherent flaws in the strategy? The resulting speculation caused the share price to plummet initially 14% to £3.29, eventually bottoming out at a low of £3.01 in September. The answer it seems is no. Whatever Stephen Kelly’s reasons for leaving, they do not hint at any wider strategic problems. Since the end of September there has been a steady rally with a strong upturn in the value of Micro Focus shares during the course of November to above £4.15. This came on the back of a better than expected fiscal first half performance, attributed in part to the acquired portfolios outperforming their expectations.

So, relieved customers and investors all around? From the latter’s point of view it seems Micro Focus made the right move at the right time. To understand the benefits to the customer, I met up with Micro Focus in November to get a sneak preview of the company’s strategy in bringing together its newly acquired product set. 

In May 2009 our briefing report outlined our thoughts on the acquisition and highlighted some of our concerns, including in particular, whether Micro Focus would make the most of the entire Borland portfolio.

Our initial take on what the company is proposing in bringing together its newly enlarged portfolio is positive overall. But there are still some questions that remain unanswered and which the company must act swiftly to address – most notably what it will do with Borland’s modelling facilities that have been languishing in the background with little or no investment.

With Micro Focus’s background in the mainframe market, COBOL continues to offer strong growth opportunities to the company despite (or more likely because of) its 50-year maturity. The mainframe continues to offer unbeatable value and performance for certain types of transaction programming.  That said, Application Modernisation remains a fundamental strategic direction and capability for Micro Focus, especially in light of the growing importance and retention of mainframe applications coupled with the need to integrate them with – and make the most of – the latest disruptive technological advances.

Portfolio Management – application and project – along with Software Change and Configuration Management (SCCM) are the core pillars underpinning the company’s enterprise modernisation and management strategy. This is hardly surprising given how the recent acquisitions strengthen Micro Focus’s capabilities in all three areas. 

Where we are most reassured is in the company’s integration of the products from the Borland and Compuware ASQ acquisitions. In the case of Borland, there was no doubt that the company had developed a highly compelling message and portfolio around Agile development execution and management, as well as development process improvements through greater intelligence and analytics and quality management and assurance. Micro Focus taking a pragmatic approach to building on top of this solid foundation and moving forward with sensible amalgamations. The overlap that we saw between both Borland’s QA tools and the Compuware ASQ portfolio has been addressed judiciously, opening the way for a better and more targeted focus of the product line going forward.

Looking to the future, not surprisingly, issues such as having the right Cloud strategy and tooling platform for its portfolio are a top line concern and strategic direction for Micro Focus. As applies to everyone with a vested interest in the cloud market, application security and disaster recovery are two clear focal points that they will look to address clearly.

Ultimately there is something to be savoured for both existing and prospective customers, along with some necessary sabre rattling for the competitors. Micro Focus is clearly keen to provide a sense of the new organisation it has become and how all the pieces fit together. As always, the challenge will be to deliver a portfolio where the sum is greater than the whole. What the company demonstrated is that it is wise enough to protect revenue and not alienate customers as it initially focuses on individual solution areas. More importantly they showed the potential of a better and more realistic future for both Borland and Compuware’s ASQ business.

As for its CEO, as we said at the beginning, to lose twice looks like carelessness. Let’s hope Micro Focus takes heed and is as astute in appointing a new CEO.

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Who’s to blame for insecure software code?

October 14th, 2009

Security, or more precisely software security, continues to be a top line concern for many IT and software development managers.  But they do not share this burden alone, since the task of securing software is not only a development issue but also relates to the practices and processes in place within the organisation in ensuring security is not compromised at any point.

Developing secure code is not really the issue here since there are many good tools and guidelines from the vendor community to help apply security check points, automation and best practices.  There has been much in the way of vendors beefing up their secure code offerings and demonstrating a level of trustworthiness that should reassure many organisations.  The usual suspects in the software vendor community have all increased their push towards a software security agenda in the last six months: HP has delivered tools to improve the identification of security holes in Flash applications and other related web content;  IBM has acquired Ounce Labs to round off its code security tooling credentials from its earlier acquisition of Watchfire; and  Microsoft continues to push a strong security agenda both for its operating system and server products as well as in its ability to support the software delivery and production team in handling security well.

Sometimes organisations think that secure software code, applications or content is really the preserve of the IT organisation. But in many respects security, like all other criteria that influence and impact the overall quality of a software application – perceived and actual – needs to be ingrained. This means that it is not just a requirement that is dealt with either through tooling or processes carried out during the different phases of the development, delivery and production process;it must also be reflected in the attitude of all the participating roles that define, deliver and operate the final application. If the business sponsors don’t think about the security policies from the start, then the IT organisation is left in the dark as to where best to apply security controls and identify where the priorities are.

This attitude aspect is a really important point that we often fail to address in the IT industry and is very much part of the people theme that is often down played. I recently spoke to the development managers and chief architects of a supplier responsible for developing mobile firmware and content about how they managed quality within their processes and ensured that the product developed and delivered met the expected quality bars. What came across loud and clear was how important it was for them that quality was ingrained in the attitude of their employees across the board and that they prided themselves in achieving this level of buy in from the team.  In fact it allowed them to forgo some of the formal and heavier duty tools associated with quality compliance. Attitude is often found to be the lynch pin of many a successful software implementation and should not be discounted when thinking about software security.

Disruptive technologies like Cloud, Software as a Service and the desire for richer interactive and more experienced centred applications are once again pushing software security – and in particular code security – into the spotlight. 

With more at stake, now that many more businesses and organisations across a broad cross section of industries are looking to and relying more on software, how and who should be policing software security is the question.  Is it time to get tougher and start making people accountable and responsible with law enforcing penalties?  Should we allow the industry to police and regulate itself since there is now a greater level of vested interest?  Is it really feasible to apply legal penalties for all cases of software development?

It is questions like these that I and my two guest speakers discuss in MWD’s latest instalment of the Software Delivery InFocus Podcast Series – “Policing Software Security”.  In the podcast discussion I am joined by John Colley, EMEA Managing Director for (ISC)2, a non-profit professional organisation that represents over 60,000 information security professionals  worldwide, of which over 10,000 reside in the EMEA region.  My second guest speaker is Alessandro Moretti who is currently Executive Director of IT Security Risk Management for UBS Investment Bank. 

A point of interest from our discussion focused on the fact that despite the laudable actions of the SANS  and Mitre group  backed by 30 of the leading  US and international cyber security organisations in identifying the top 25 coding errors that place vulnerabilities in code, it was still government money and impetus – in the form of the US National Security Agency – that was the driving force behind the project.  The software vendor community however should have had the motivation long ago since the financial and security implications have been quantified and known for some time. That said, whilst government backing financially and in direction has the power to focus, it is the responsibility of both suppliers and consuming organisations to take more seriously the software security agenda.

We welcome comments from listeners of the podcast and readers of this blog to share their thoughts in what they believe might be the best way to tackle software security.

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links for 2009-07-18

July 18th, 2009

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Microsoft sparkles with Silverlight and Expression launch but is it dazzling the right audiences?

July 17th, 2009

Microsoft chose July 10th 2009 as a day to show the world “the light” of Silverlight 3 and Expression 3, the latest versions of its tools for delivering engaging user experiences. Certainly anyone who has yet to see the light can do so at www.seethelight.com . In brief the key features highlighted with this release that we believe to be noteworthy and important are:

  • Silverlight 3’s support for and ease of use of “Deep Zoom” , smooth streaming in conjunction with the Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7) Media services pack and the ability to work outside out of the browser.
  • Expression 3’s importers for Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator enabling high fidelity imports from these widely used design products
  • SketchFlow – a tool that allows for rapid prototyping of user Interfaces and designed to address the interactions and user experience right at the start of the project

This launch sees an evolution of Microsoft’s design credentials and a general improvement in the company’s credibility in delivering design focused tooling and a user experience platform. The high profile customer case studies (such as Ping) highlighted in the announcement detail some impressive productivity and business value propositions. Despite continually knocking Adobe there are underlying subtleties that indicate a higher purpose.

Microsoft is clearly serious about design and the user experience and recognises the importance and value of user engagement, interaction and loyalty on the business bottom line – its own and the wider business community. Of course it is not alone in this assessment nor has it been the first to push this cause – Adobe supported by its acquisition of Macromedia has been a long time crusader. However, the launch of Microsoft’s SketchFlow (and to a lesser extent Adobe’s equivalent Flash Catalyst which is still in beta) offers a simple and very important value proposition: bringing the user interface designer in from the cold, giving them a legitimate and valuable placing within the software delivery team and a recognisable role in the software development and delivery process.

SketchFlow tackles the requirements capture process for GUI based applications where the context of the interaction and the interactivity is important. Such considerations are as vital to the success of an application in meeting and satisfying end user expectations and improving the perception of good quality as the overall functionality is. It specifically allows designers to be very much part of the upfront client requirements capture process and present a united working front with the developer. Sophisticated sketching prototyping facilities which support annotated reviewing from multiple inputs generally allow users to focus on important features like the flow of the interaction, data access and exposure and the overall look and feel of the interface without being distracted by the details and specifics of the design too early in the process.

Microsoft isn’t only facing competition from Adobe. The leading Requirements Management vendors (Borland with TeamDefine, IBM Rational with Rational Requirements Composer and its partnership with iRise) are also getting in on the act. Ultimately the launch of all these tools demonstrates what is really needed to support the development of Rich Internet / Interactive Applications and bring it into the folds of the software development process and workflow.

I have spoken to a number of design organisations since the announcement and was interested to find cautious acceptance within the design community for Microsoft’s value proposition in the design market and recognition of its commitment to designers. Many show a willingness to examine products like Silverlight and Expression further. There is also general acknowledgement of the depth and sophistication of the design tools and some admiration for what the vendor has achieved in a relatively short timeframe. The penetration of Silverlight is still too low for many of them to present it as a viable alternative when bidding for certain marketing focused projects. And despite Silverlights clear cross browser and platform support there is still wariness with Microsoft’s overall push for its own platform and lack of direct and native support for many designers favoured work platform: Apple’s Mac OS.

That said, many see good commercial opportunities with Silverlight 3 and in using Expression. Microsoft’s stronghold in the enterprise developer and ISV community means that the company can potentially provide a bridge into broader markets that go beyond consumer focused eye candy.

From an enterprise user perspective there are many reasons for embarking on a particular technology course or supporting a specific vendor’s product portfolio. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft is keenly demonstrating its competitive differentiation and there is much to commend its product set. Aside from the new features marketed, Microsoft’s ethos for ease of use particularly for the most common functions remains very much a high profile strategy. Separating the development of code from the design creation process but keeping them in sync and closely aligned maintains the right separation of role concerns i.e. designers to do more of their job in thinking about user experiences and intuitive interactivity.

Those who have invested heavily in the Microsoft platform will welcome the investment in design and user experience that the company is making. The tight integration of Silverlight and the Expression tooling with the latest version of Microsoft’s flagship development lifecycle platform Visual Studio 2010 and the underlying Team Foundation Server (TFS) will undoubtedly broaden the reach and capabilities of the software delivery team. However, design, interaction and engagement are specialist skills that many developers lack, making the role of designers an ever important requirement.

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Software Delivery InFocus podcast – Software Product Lines

July 2nd, 2009
This is the fifth in our Software Delivery InFocus series of podcast episodes, starring Bola Rotibi – the Principal Analyst of MWD’s Software Delivery competency area. In this episode, she explores the emerging topic of Software Product Lines with guests James Cezo of Lockheed Martin and Dale Churchett of HomeAway (a leading vacation rentals company).

The concept of Software Product Lines (SPL) is designed to help organisations identify and manage variation and commonality in software deliverry – so that it’s possible to efficiently deliver multiple variations of a software product or service, each of which shares common elements.

With the increasing use of and the important reliance on software components within manufactured products and the sizeable market for commercial software applications, the concerns of the software delivery and management lifecycle are converging with the concerns of the delivery and management lifecycle of software based products.

The challenges facing organisations charged with delivering variations of software applications and software based products are ones of consistency, repeatability and confident reuse

Here, Bola talks to her guests about the concept of SPL; what each company is doing with SPL and how they’re making SPL work for them; and what the main challenges that they’ve each experienced in implementing SPL.

You can download the audio here or alternatively you can subscribe to the podcast feed to make sure you catch this and all future podcasts!

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As real as it gets at IBM Rational Software Conference 2009

June 1st, 2009

Orlando Florida is once again the setting for IBM Rational Software Conference 2009. This year the big theme is “As real as it Gets” and will undoubtedly be a show case for just how real the benefits and value proposition are from the enlarged portfolio that now include the tools from Telelogic and Watchfire. A notable omission is the word “Developer” from the conference title. Past conferences have been billed as the Rational Software Developer Conference. This is a deliberate omission since anyone who has been listening to any of the messaging from the group in recent months will know that IBM Rational is on a ticket to demonstrate that the group stands for more than the developer and development community. The big push is for software development and delivery as a managed business process, which in effects is a bigger story than purely a software development focus. Managing software development and delivery as a managed business process undoubtedly reaches out to a wider audience that must include the business and those responsible for managing, operating and implementing the software solution once it is released for deployment i.e. a full lifecycle of concerns and stakeholders.

Anyone who has followed the company over the years will realise that despite dropping the developer tag, the IBM Rational team hasn’t really deviated from the collective scripts of the different messaging themes delivered at IBM Rational Software Developer Conferences (RSDC) in recent years:
Software matters; software runs the world; better software, better business

All the different messages focus on the importance of software and its prevalence and pervasiveness in the modern world and our daily lives. Software plays an important and vital role in underpinning innovations and business transformations that will allow organisations to gain competitive differentiation and operational excellence. IBM is not alone in its assertions as its messages are shared by and delivered by many of the software vendors today.
Software is a key component for driving business transformation and engaging effectively with globally distributed teams. Software technology and applications span the entire industry and business landscape, increasingly becoming an integral part to the way we live, work and play. Developing the right software application and using the right piece of software technology correctly is in our opinion important to future business and operational success and driving the innovation underpinning smarter products and machinery.

There can be no room for excuses and inaction. The landscape of business has changed considerably: increasing diversity, cross organisational global project teams, a mobile and geographically located workforce and the opportunities and threats from emerging markets and economies. The traditional practices are no longer appropriate as new technologies and approaches (agile, iterative, social networking/computing, virtualisation, dual core processing and 64 bit computing, unified communication etc.) transform the way we interact, deliver and perform.

It is therefore not surprising that the value of software has grown. Even the industries that deal with complex systems and engineered systems and manufactured goods have seen significant rises in the development of software base products and systems that provide a greater capacity for intelligence and analytics i.e. “smarter products”. Get it right and the rewards can be substantial, leading to improved performance, financial success, a higher level of sophistication and automation, greater efficiency, flexibility, agility and productivity. Get it wrong and the consequences can be far reaching and significantly damaging.

Over the next few days I will be commenting on the major announcements delivered over the course of the conference. I am expecting there to be greater elaboration on the group’s strategy in a number of areas:

  • Cloud delivery and support services in the development space.
  • Reaching out to a broader audience that includes the complex systems and engineering focused domains of defence and aerospace, Telecommunications, automotive, medical systems and other manufactured products.
  • Intelligence and analytics including more in the way of more appropriate business related metrics for the development process that quantitatively assess the value proposition and measure the risks.
  • Organisation and team collaboration and communication.

So, stay tuned!

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Borland acquisition: it finally happened – but not how we expected

May 8th, 2009

Borland – long-time software tools and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) vendor – has finally been acquired, after many months of speculation. But the acquirer is a surprise: Micro Focus, a 30+ year old UK-based supplier of application modernisation tools. The other surprise is that at the same time, Micro Focus is acquiring the Application Testing and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) division of Compuware.

But was this endgame inevitable for both companies? Alan Zeicheck  made an astute comment in his blog back in January stating that by putting the CFO in charge on former CEO Tod Neilsen’s departure, Borland was signalling its intent to package the company for sale. Certainly the departure of key members of the Borland’s management team dealt a damaging blow to Borland. This and the woeful share price have both contributed to Borland’s endgame. That said, Borland’s independence might have been maintained for a while longer with a more committed management team with less lofty ambitions.  In recently reviewing Borland’s product portfolio I found strong evidence of a company being able to deliver value propositions to the market that went beyond its historical strengths in code development. 

 Compuware’s continued future as an independent software vendor has on the other hand been less on the line, but its roadmap for its software testing and quality portfolio has been up in the air ever since the company launched its Compuware 2.0 campaign back in May 2008, and failed to establish a clear direction for its quality management and testing tools (as I reported here). In this respect, it’s perhaps not surprising to see Compuware walk away from this business.

In announcing the acquisitions, Micro Focus has been clear about wanting to be  a major player in the quality assurance and testing tools market  and is not leaving anything to chance by buying up two strong toolsets (complete with their development and support structures and customers). The company appears unfazed about having acquired two toolsets, seeing Borland’s Silk platform complementary to that of Compuware’s ASQ portfolio.  We on the other hand are more cautious about this, seeing a number of overlapping features and services that will require a careful roadmap if the company is to leverage the best of both brands without jeopardising the existing customer base. This is particularly important because with HP Mercury as a confirmed market leader, Micro Focus is looking to challenge the positions of the next tier of players – IBM Rational, Microsoft and a number of other smaller (but formidable) vendors.

But what of the other Borland products residing inside the Borland portfolio? Aside from its testing tools, Borland has a strong set of application lifecycle management (ALM) tools in the Borland Management Suite – and in addition, Borland is a leader in understanding and helping customers with the challenges of shifting to Agile software delivery practices. Micro Focus would be foolish to leave these capabilities on the shelf – but at the same time Borland’s ALM strategy is not without its challenges (as I wrote in our recent report on ALM).

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