MKS Rolls Out New Change Management Features for Application Development

by Dan Burger

Do you make a living developing applications? Do you manage a development team? Either way, changes in the way that projects are managed is becoming an increasingly important issue. MKS, one of several vendors in the iSeries change management market, last week announced several software releases that the company predicts will benefit projects in which controls on application development are being tightened. The releases come from what MKS calls the MKS Integrity Solution for enterprise software configuration management.

In announcing its latest releases--Source Integrity Enterprise Edition 8.4, Integrity Manager 4.5, and Implementer 5.4--the company is highlighting advancements in the areas of production, administration, reporting, collaboration, usability, and performance. Implementer is MKS's tool for managing in the OS/400 environment, while Source Integrity Enterprise Edition manages Windows and Unix environments. Integrity Manager is the unified console that allows management of development projects in all the above mentioned environments.

At the top of the list is a new build and deploy module, designed to give a consistent and repeatable approach to deploying software changes in production. This particular feature is controlled via the Integrity Manager, and its purpose is to prevent unauthorized changes from being introduced in production. It also provides rollback and audit capabilities that are designed to minimize the risk of failure.

In the past, administration for both Source Integrity and Integrity Manager were handled separately. To improve administration, MKS unified this control feature. It has a GUI and was improved to allow incremental updates to be automatically distributed remotely, a feature that should help organizations reduce both administration costs and errors.

To simplify report sharing, Integrity Manager now includes a Web-based feature called Reports Wizard that provides a template for creating the types of standardized communications that management can appreciate.

To reduce administrative tasks and the costs of adding and removing temporary users from the corporate network, MKS added security features that permit non-company or temporary users outside of the corporate network, such as consultants or outsourced firms, controlled access through an improved authentication process. With additional code management tool enhancements designed to merge developers' tasks and control multiple domains, MKS has enhanced the project collaboration capabilities available in previous versions.

The upgrades to Implementer 5.4 are mainly to coincide with the latest version of IBM's WebSphere Development Studio client (WDSc) 5.0. They include a graphical user interface that uses the eclipse-based WDSc. The Web browser interface now operates on the iSeries under the Apache Web server (iSeries HTTP Server powered by Apache) as well as the original iSeries HTTP server.

Implementer also added tighter control for the Visual LANSA environment, automatic conflict resolution, and simplified integration with user-written and third-party TCP/IP policy enforcement tools, which eliminates the need for certain users to access FTP.

MKS Source Integrity Enterprise Edition 8.4, MKS Integrity Manager 4.5, the MKS Build and Deployment Module, and Implementer 5.4 are available directly from MKS. Pricing for Implementer is tier-based and begins at $9,000, regardless of the number of users. Source Integrity and Integrity Manager are individually priced at $900 per license.

More information about MKS and its products can be found at www.mks.com.

This article has been corrected since it was first published. The Web browser interface now operates on the iSeries under the Apache Web server (iSeries HTTP Server powered by Apache) as well as the original iSeries HTTP server," not the "open-source Web server," as originally stated. Guild Companies regrets the error. [Correction made 06/03/03.]

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