HPE adds Octane to its application lifecycle management tool

Enhancing its application lifecycle management (ALM) tool, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has launched HPE ALM Octane, a cloud-based ALM solution for DevOps (Developments and operations clubbed together), which the company feels wil provide insights into software, speed up delivery, and ensure quality user experiences. Octane is expected to evolve traditional application development methods, such as agile, lean and is an extension of the already existing products, HPE ALM and Quality Center. The solution also facilitates visually guided and easily configured business rules and workflow for application delivery. While, HPE ALM Octane addresses the recent digital shift in software, the need to develop high-quality software at accelerated rates has arrived, claims the company. It also supports a rapid feedback loop with open-source development and test tool chains delivering ChatOps, offering integration with collaboration tools like Slack and Hubot.

Key features of HPE ALM Octane:

• Enhanced Open Source Dev/Test Toolchains – HPE ALM Octane, is integrated with a core set of widely adopted tools focused on test automation, collaboration and application deployment, which increase volume and shift testing left. Leveraging the strength of these tools, HPE ALM Octane adds value for cross-tool chain visibility and insight. The solution will support the following tools and frameworks:
• Jenkins and TeamCity integration to trigger continuous integration and testing activities, discover tests, execute test runs, and maintain relationships and report results — including defects associated with each pipeline build.
• GIT to provide manual tests script version management and managing tests in source code.
• Business-Driven Development (BDD) via support of Gherkin to develop tests earlier in the design and development phases of the lifecycle; this helps streamline the use of automated testing from manual processes as tests are easily converted to automated scripts.
• A wide array of test automation tools from HPE and Open Source including, HPE Unified Functional Testing, HPE LeanFT, HPE StormRunner Load, and Selenium that are executed via CI integration and test activities, types and results which are continuously reported and linked to HPE ALM Octane application modules, builds and defects.
• Swagger-documented REST APIs for straightforward third-party tool integration.
• Continuous Quality for DevOps Software Delivery – Utilizes the continuous integration process and associated activities to capture, analyze, provide, and present intuitively actionable data for defect management and tracking.
• Enhanced Collaboration with ChatOps – Proactively tracks rapidly evolving relationships between pipeline activity, application architecture and components, and state of quality. In addition, HPE ALM Octane tracks change between application components, backlog, builds, tests, and defects. Artifacts, status, and relationships are easily maintained through intelligent tagging and with ChatOps, collaboration becomes context rich and automatic.

Raffi Margaliot, senior Vice President and General Manager, Application Delivery Management, HPE, said:

“HPE ALM Octane is specifically designed for Agile and DevOps-ready teams, bringing a cloud-first approach that’s accessible anytime and anywhere, bolstered by big data-style analytics to help deliver speed, quality, and scale across all modes of IT.”

Apart from Octane, HPE has also introduced Verity, a new suite of governance tools designed to reduce the amount of manual work involved in handling records. This facility is designed to help businesses manage, govern and extract actionable insights from enterprise information with a unified index, user experience as well as an analytics engine from HPE Vertica. The idea is that compliance, legal, risk management and IT experts can all work from the same dashboard.