ARCAD Software:
A set of solutions to simply manage, organize and secure the evolution of your Information System.
The ARCAD offer covers a variety of markets:
All this with specialized knowledge of the technological environment around the IBM iSeries platform. The iSeries itself being an integration point for multiple technologies, our expertise extends beyond the native iSeries to Windows, UNIX and Linux environments.
All ARCAD solutions are modular, progressive, open, and fully integrated.
The vocation of ARCAD Software is to offer integrated software suites for all phases of the change cycle of an information system. The suites form the cornerstones of a high level methodology, guaranteeing productivity and quality throughout.
The ARCAD suites apply to anyone affected by application change:
The ARCAD-Observer suite is a concrete solution for maintaining and transferring the knowledge of existing systems. Whether the context is application maintenance or modernization, the basic needs are the same: to find information within complex application architectures and have ready access to technical documentation that is guaranteed relevant and up-to-date.
The lion's share of IT service resources is dedicated to maintaining existing applications rather than to developing new ones. Further, security and high availability of applications are critical to the success of companies today, compounded by new regulatory requirements and application modernization needs. So clearly there is a strong argument for installing the right tools to handle these issues proactively. ARCAD-Skipper applies to companies of any scale, for safeguarding legacy applications and ensuring security and productivity during application enhancement.
In line with Software Configuration Management methodologies, the "Changer" module firstly simplifies daily development tasks by maximizing automation and the integrity checking of changes. Thanks to its multi-platform capability, ARCAD-Skipper adapts equally well to native or any kind of Windows, UNIX or Linux development processes. Fully integrated into the Eclipse platform, teams share the same environment that is synchronized by a parallel maintenance control system.
The ARCAD-Customer Help-Desk is a latest generation technical support management suite, offering more services with the same simplicity of use. ARCAD-Customer takes end-user relations to a new level and extends management and control over the technical support activity.
The ARCAD-Skipper suite guarantees you full control over your application changes. It applies a structured organizational framework based on robust and proven methodologies. By this alone, IT departments often see productivity gains exceeding 30%. ARCAD Skipper is a suite, for defining a set of working environments and automating the lifecycle of software components, such as transfer to test, transfer to production, distribution and multi-machine installation.
Thanks to their open architecture, the ARCAD products can be either customized or used in standard format. This makes them a safe choice for the evolving requirements of a wide range of customers.
In these downstream phases, the ARCAD-Skipper suite aims for 100% automation, thanks to its own internal macro-language. With this level of automation, procedures can be triggered at night, checked remotely and most importantly secured with powerful integrated rollback functions. ARCAD-Deliver automates the deployment and installation of objects on local or remote machines. It can be configured for any distribution media or mode (entire applications, "cumulative", "PTF", open distribution). With its entirely customizable "macro-commands," it can adapt to any situation, and all information is logged at several levels (version, component, action, messages) with automatic rollback functions in case of incident.
Due to its integrated and open global architecture, ARCAD-Skipper can adapt to all types of configurations, working speeds, and levels of need. Its developer-oriented approach and interchangeable native and graphical / Websphere interfaces make the tool highly adaptable to your team's working methods. It provides a complete solution for multi-platform application management.
Software development teams spend at least 50% of their time trying to understand an application before modifying it. The solution to this business problem is application mining software that focuses on productivity in iSeries application maintenance. Application mining is to the IT professional what data mining is to the business manager.
With version 8, ARCAD-Skipper made a major leap forward with support for version control of parameter data. With this feature, parameter changes to a software package or in-house application are identified and automatically deployed to production. This tool is a complete "memory" of application change, with an embedded user request management feature that is shared with the [ARCAD-Customer ] Help-Desk suite. Traceability is ensured right from the request down to the modified line of code. This is particularly important for companies subject to regulatory constraints such as [SOX or Basel II ].
ARCAD-Deliver provides a comprehensive solution which automatically distributes and installs new versions of software to local and remote machines, and allows the IT team to fully customize the process to their needs. Technologically, this tool uses a system of lists, which are created by the different batches of modifications transferred to production. It is possible to select objects or sources according to criteria that can be cumulated. These lists are built automatically by the [ARCAD-Changer ] solution. The system allows you to create coherent batches (retrieval of logical files depending on a physical file, programs using certain files, etc).
This particular module is destined for development staff during unit testing. With the Test Coverage Analyzer the developer can view the source lines that have not yet been tested, and thereby check that all modified lines have been run at least once. The system continually measures the test coverage rate, to evaluate the overall testing effort. The generated reports can be used as contractual documents between customers and their suppliers.
Each solution can be acquired separately, as needed, then added to complement your changing needs. Your system develops at the same pace as your organization.
Testing procedures are costly but necessary. Indeed, numerous test phases are required to ensure a satisfactory level of reliability for your users. Automatic test tools are a useful and effective solution to help control these costs. These tools guarantee non regression of the information system through thorough and in-depth testing. In the case of regular maintenance or urgently-needed corrections, these tools are indispensable to guarantee the automatic testing of peripheral functions that may be indirectly affected by a change.
The multi-platform approach to components and data is vital, as it means that the same procedures and the same levels of security can be used to automatically synchronize the deployment of components and data to heterogeneous servers. And of particular interest to software vendors, complementary functions such as the delivery portal allow on-demand dispatching of patches, CDs and documentation.
Then the scenario can be replayed at any time, and the tool will automatically restore the original data context prior to scenario execution. Once a "replay" has completed, comparison reports can be generated to highlight differences detected in the user interface, in data, and in spool files.
This unique solution is the result of our partnership with several application software vendors. This tool brings you peace of mind as you handle the reception of each new application version. ARCAD-Integrater guarantees the integrity of items transferred to production, ensuring the non-regression of your information system. In addition to peace of mind, the solution provides time savings through automation of checkouts and impact analysis tasks. The time-consuming process of integrating software packages can be reduced to just one hour. ARCAD-Integrater is a reliable and secure tool which allows you to simultaneously improve productivity and eliminate any risk of errors in the transfer-to-production phase.
The principle is simple: Using the supplied analyses, you select a list of fields to transform. This list is fed into "propagation engines" that track the information flow across inter-field connections and then generate modification proposals. Once the proposals have been validated, they are then applied into the sources and the components are recompiled.
For efficient control over your application changes, you will need precise dashboard information.
Optimize and secure your application infrastructure. Computing is right in the middle of an industrial era. As the primary enterprise competitiveness tool, it needs to rationalize its costs to become a value creator. ARCAD Software is at the heart of this "industrial revolution".
When projects impact your database, you should still be targeting maximum automation, as the only sure way to team productivity and exhaustive code transformation. Impact analysis constitutes a sizeable proportion of any information system modification. It is an essential preliminary step in the success of any IS evolution project. Many maintenance projects also require database modifications (field addition and size modification, for example). Eliminating the risks involved in modifications and their corresponding adaptations is a lengthy and tedious task that entails two major concerns: Impact analysis and code conversion.
What makes the ARCAD solutions unique is their integrated design, based on a central repository core. Indeed the same R&D team has designed the products since the company's inception. This is a true guarantee of product consistency and ergonomy. In addition, the modular design of the product range means that implemented solutions are both flexible and scalable.
The ARCAD-Skipper suite fits in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) market covering Software Configuration Management methodologies, version control, deployment and test. Right from user request handling up to the transfer of new versions to production, ARCAD-Skipper secures a general framework for all change processes.
The adoption of our products and services across this wide range is itself recognition of our expertise by experts in the field. Market demand for ARCAD Software is highest among software developers migrating their legacy applications to a Web architecture. Whether you are involved in software development or a 3rd party software user, the ARCAD suites apply to anyone affected by application change.
With the ARCAD-Qualifier suite you rapidly improve the productivity of your testing phases and attain the application reliability you have been looking for. Given the critical nature of today's applications, and the impact of a malfunction on the organization, the question "how can I improve and maintain the reliability of my applications?" becomes top priority. ARCAD-Qualifier answers this need with three complementary modules.
The initial ARCAD project was financed by the European Space Agency (www.esa.int). Leaders in the space industry have always been a driving force in innovations in software quality. The scale of the stakes and investment involved has naturally led these organizations to equip themselves with methods and tools for guaranteeing the most reliable conditions for change in their software base.
All ARCAD employees work in a spirit of maximum quality service. We consider reactivity and follow-through with our customers as one of our key success factors and we are committed to maintaining a personal relationship with each and every one. Our customers are a constant source of input in our development strategy.
ARCAD-Observer is the only product in the iSeries field to summarize application architecture and rules with a set of graphical tools, in order to sift through a vast quantity of diverse information and understand an application in seconds prior to making changes.