Unisys software development manager Nick Rea lives and works in Wellington. Although his company is well known in New Zealand for its consulting, systems integration and outsourcing work, that aspect of the company’s portfolio is not something that Rea spends much time on. Instead, he is part of a global Unisys software development team with members in New Zealand, India and the United States – all working on telephony product development projects, including one for giant US telco Verizon Wireless.

But first, some background. In recent years, Unisys worldwide has undergone a transformation from being a predominantly hardware-oriented organisation to a services-led technology company. Critical to this transformation has been the company’s capacity to respond rapidly to the demands of its clients with innovative products and services. And fundamental to that initiative is the capacity of Unisys software developers, like Rea, to reduce the time it takes to build software solutions for their clients.

With this thought top of mind, two years ago Unisys made the decision to standardise all its software development teams (which includes over 9000 developers, 1000 testers, and 2000 business analysts worldwide) on the IBM Rational Tools suite of products. “The Rational Tools suite provides all the tools a geographically dispersed software development team needs to collaborate,” says IBM New Zealand’s Philip de Wilde. “All in one box.”

Effective collaboration
Rea says prior to standardising on IBM Rational Tools, multi-site software development was certainly possible, but it did have its challenges. “With Rational Suite we have seamless sharing of information,” he says. “In the past we would have been emailing bits of code back and forth and having to communicate in other less effective ways.” With developers being able to collaborate more efficiently the net result for clients is software solutions delivered faster, says Unisys architect director Ed Ferrara. “Leveraging Rational’s tools and processes we believe we have a six to 18 month market lead as a systems integrator.”

Rea points to the current Verizon Wireless project as a good example of how a standardised software suite eases collaboration between dispersed development teams. “What we’ve done for them is cooperative component-based software development. We’ve built a product that provides an email-like interface to voice and fax mails. Verizon has its own web client that its subscribers can access – much like you would access Xtra’s mail system here. But with what we’ve done, people can see their voice and fax messages represented like emails – and if it’s a voice message, they can now get that streamed down to their PC, or download it as a voice attachment sound file.”

Global teamwork
Although he works for Unisys New Zealand, Rea says he’s actually working on the Verizon project as part of a research and development group which is managed from the US. “The fact that we have standardised product development on Rational Tools means we can have collaborative activities going across multiple time-zones and get a lot done – quickly,” he says. “So for the Verizon project we work closely with our site in Pennsylvania (in the US), and we also work with an offshore product development outsourcing company based in Bangalore in India.”

All three centres are developing components of the Verizon application. “Using the Rational Suite of products we can share that code,” says Rea, “share defects, and can communicate quickly on software development issues – resolving them much more readily than we would any other way.”

Synchronisation saving time
Prior to adopting Rational Tools, Rea says there were several obstacles for this type of ‘multi-site’ development project. “The main one is the seamless sharing of information and details as far as the software code is concerned – making sure everybody is current on changes.” The effortless synchronisation of the system is a major plus, he says. “As part of the Rational Suite we have the ClearQuest change management system and the ClearCase source code repository. They’re both set up so that there’s a master for certain components in one location and there are replicas in other locations.

“For example, the Logging and Tracing component is mastered in New Zealand but copies of that are maintained in various locations throughout the Unisys network. They’re copied automatically, so whenever we make a change to a particular piece of code, that change is visible practically immediately everywhere there is a replica, as the code repository system, ClearCase, synchronises every hour throughout the world.”

Although the ability to share source code is not in itself new, Rea says the Rational Tools suite has additional functionality not seen in other bundles. “ClearQuest’s multi-site ability to share the defect and change management information is a relatively new feature within the tool set,” he says, “and we were the first in Asia-Pacific to use that.”

Client benefits
So what’s in this for client’s using Unisys for software development projects? According to Rea, in “speed to market” terms the Rational solution can help Unisys take months off the development process – but there’s more to the solution than just software tools. “It certainly helps in terms of development time frames,” he says, “but it’s only a supporting tool and it doesn’t mean developers can avoid following good software development guidelines.” To help them do this, he says Unisys has also adopted the Rational Unified Process of software development.

The Rational Process is a philosophy of software development that’s being adopted by a number of organisations,” he says. “It’s a form of iterative development, where the development goes through a series of cycles adding more features to a product at each cycle.” And with the Rational Suite the software testing of each cycle is automated – once again, saving time.

“If you going through a product development that has five cycles,” says Rea, “everything you develop on the first cycle will be tested at least four more times in cycles two, three, four and five – so it makes it easier if the testing process is automated.” Another plus says Rea, is the auditability of the solution. “Everything is integrated in the suite,” he says. “So project requirements, design artifacts, code requirements, tests and defects can all be linked to code – so you’ve got traceability from each point in the product lifecycle.”

The last word on the subject goes to IBM’s de Wilde. “What Unisys is doing with the Verizon Wireless project is a great example of how a New Zealand company can be an integral part of a global project,” he says, “and what enables them to do that is the fact that all their development teams have standardised on the same tool set.”

For more information
www.rational.com
www.unisys.com

IBM: Philip de Wilde
04 576 5987
pdewilde@nz1.ibm.com

July 2004

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