ALF-alpha sprouts in New Zealand

Application Lifecycle Framework offers 'no problem' for local developers

Serena Software, vendor of software designed to assist application development and integration, is seeking partners from around the world to help meld software from multiple vendors into a common Application Lifecycle Framework (ALF).

Serena’s “ALF evangelist”, Kevin Parker, visited New Zealand earlier this month as part of the recruiting effort.

He believes local “boutique vendors” will have knowledge of a wide range of application development assistance products as they cannot afford to specialise and must cultivate knowledge of everything they might have to work with when integrating a client’s development and testing operations.

Such integration is the purpose of the ALF project, supported by IBM under its open-source Eclipse scheme.

A client might use Serena’s configuration management tool, for example, but prefer BMC’s Remedy for helpdesk operations and tools from other vendors for requirements planning, testing or other elements of the process, says Parker.

A need arises for a multiplicity of interfaces so the tools can competently share information. Even after these have been written, the client has the problem of keeping all the ad hoc interfaces up to date as the vendors issue new product releases.

The ALF project’s proposed solution is a central “interoperability framework” with which each vendor works, updating its own “ALF-enabled” interface in synchronisation with its new versions. The release of the first parts of ALF is scheduled for April next year, and will be known as (what else?) ALF-alpha.