Talking Problems and Resolution with BMC's Ran Gishri
The job of testing and troubleshooting applications is tougher than it has
ever been. At least, that's what Ran Gishri, director of global marketing at
BMC Software, will tell you.
As the man in charge of BMC's AppSight product line -- recently renamed BMC
Application Problem Resolution System (APRS) -- Gishri often sees large development
shops struggle with increasingly complex and changeable business and technology
environments.
"Many of the problems are just due to change. I get the sense from 60,000
feet that everything is changing," Gishri said. "More and more companies
are releasing more often. I think with all the agile methods and pressure to
build more and get it out sooner and make it high-quality...all that change
is really, really killing applications."
Gishri should know. BMC
Application Problem Resolution System 7.0 is designed to help dev teams
gather, assess and analyze information related to application troubleshooting.
By automating many of the labor-intensive activities around these tasks, APRS
7.0 aims to drive down resolution times and improve application quality.
The previous version of APRS, known as AppSight 6.0, was available in distinct
Windows and Java-based versions. The separate versions made it difficult to
sleuth issues that occurred with software processes crossing platform lines.
"Most large enterprises have mixed applications, a mix of Java and .NET,"
Gishri said. "If you are a tester, operating two different consoles, it's
very complex. It just didn't work. It didn't fly."
APRS 7.0 can automate problem detection and resolution across both Java 2 Enterprise
Edition (J2EE)- and .NET Framework-based infrastructures. The product also supports
C++ and Visual Basic development. Gishri said BMC re-architected APRS 7.0 around
a common middle tier -- derived from the Java version of AppSight 6.0 -- to
drive functionality from a single platform, rather than via multiple versions
of the tool.
"We know how to follow requests across platforms," Gishri said of
APRS 7.0. "You will be able to play back the recorded information and follow
the execution between the Windows client and Java-based server back and forth."
No surprise, Gishri has a bird's-eye view of the enterprise development market.
He said he's impressed with how far Microsoft's .NET Framework has come since
its initial launch, which he said was fraught with "glitches and problems."
Gishri said he has noticed a lot of big companies, which once focused tightly
on J2EE for enterprise deployments, shifting attention toward .NET.
"We're actually starting to see an increase in demand for .NET; we're
starting to see some decrease in demand for Java Enterprise Edition. This is
relatively new, only in the last 12 months," Gishri said. "Some of
it is definitely moving to .NET, and some of it is moving to lighter-weight
frameworks like Spring or other open source frameworks that are not that heavy
or that complicated to manage, or not that expensive."
Is your dev shop moving away from J2EE toward other frameworks? And if so,
why? E-mail me at mdesmond@reddevnews.com.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 04/29/2008