Polarion Software Weblog

Polarion Software’s has begun the review and qualification process with TÜV Nord to certify Polarion’s application lifecycle management solutions as “safety approved”.

The review and certification process, which is expected to be completed in late summer 2012, will cover Polarion ALM, Polarion REQUIREMENTS, and Polarion QA. TÜV Nord will certify that these products qualify for use in product development that must be IEC 61508 and ISO 26262 compliant.

We fully support and are committed to all the regulatory compliance challenges and industry standards our customers face to maintain business agility and growth. Polarion is trusted partner with our customers for providing solutions for FDA, FAA, CMMI, SPICE, Agile, virtually any process or mandate.

Do you have any questions regarding the certification? Please let me know.
I will keep you posted about the progress in the upcoming months.

In case you have not yet heard via the grapevine, we have in fact released version 2012 of our Application Lifecycle Management solutions. After several days of installation and checking in some customers’ environments I’m pleased to make the official release announcement here on the Polarion Blog.

First of all, here’s where you can get your hands on the new version (followed by info on what’s new in version 2012):

Test Drive Servers:

• Polarion REQUIREMENTS Test Drive Server (log in there, or sign up here)
• Polarion QA Test Drive Server (log in there, or sign up here)
• Polarion ALM Test Drive Server (log in there, or sign up here)

Downloads:

• Polarion REQUIREMENTS
• Polarion QA
• Polarion ALM

The above pages provide distributions for both new installations and updating a current installation. Polarion customers with current maintenance subscription can update free of charge.

WHAT’S NEW IN VERSION 2012

Polarion 2012 represents a major release for Polarion, with significant new features, improvements and enhancements,  including:

• New product: Polarion QA: Web-based collaborative Test Management with support for manual and automated testing, and easy results tracking for most third-party test automation tools. (More info)
• Quality Assurance and Test Management: New technology to support test specification, planning, execution and reporting. Test specification and execution are now separated in the data model, and automated testing is supported for the native build system and all third-party test automation tools that can export results to xUnit format. Exclusive round-trip for Microsoft Excel® supports offline testing by external testers.
• Polarion Live-Branch™ Variant Management: Exclusive new technology for managing document variants enables common specification artifacts to be maintained in one master document and referenced in “branched” documents, which can also contain variant-specific specification artifacts. Variants can be branched from the current state, or any historical state of the master to easily satisfy audit demand for time-specific information. Users control when and how master changes are propagated to referencing documents, and the granularity of propagated changes.
• Polarion Time-Machine™ Navigable Baselines
  Another innovative new technology, the Time-Machine feature enables users to literally go back in time to browse and search the historical state of a project, captured in a baseline, just as they can the current project state. Reports generated from inside the time-machine contain only data that was current at the time… another huge headache reliever for audits.
• Embedded SQL Database Layer: This behind-the-scenes “geek” feature makes many types of queries much faster and more efficient, especially those for artifact searching for dynamic reports on wiki pages and for traceability reports. Primary artifact storage and history remains in Subversion, and users’ existing Lucene queries still work. But users creating complex join type queries now have the option to tap the SQL layer for improved power and speed.
• Fresh, Easy-to-use User Interface: Inspired by social media portals, designed for collaboration and efficiency, focused on users, and supported by several rounds of usability tests. (Quick Video Tour)

For more information, including a list of improvements and enhancements check the Version History (also included in distribution archives).

P.S. Small but important errata:

Installation guides and version history file in distributions incorrectly states required Java version as Java 7. The correct version is Java 6. The corrected documents are available in the Documents section of product download pages.

THANKS…

On behalf of the entire Polarion team I would like to send special thanks to the customers, partners, and others who helped us with the release through our Early Access Program. Your input and suggestions really helped us make this very ambitious, feature-laden release possible.

In February, Polarion welcomed employees, consultants, and partners to a new kind of event: Polarion Kickoff 2012. The purpose of the event was threefold: to introduce the new Polarion QA product and the new features of the version 2012 release to everyone, to train sales, customer service, and consultants to enable them to answer your questions, and to provide an opportunity for colleagues who have always collaborated remotely from different parts of the world to finally meet face-to-face.

The event really pointed up the global nature of Polarion’s business, with people from 4 continents and a dozen countries as far dispersed as Brazil and Japan gathering in Stuttgart, Germany. It was the first Polarion event for two new partners: Beijing TeamLive Works Technology Co.,LTD. in China, and Radax Software Services in India.

During an intensive week, members of Polarion’s R&D and Product Management teams provided sessions along both technical and sales tracks. The challenging days were followed by fun and relaxing team-building events in the evenings. The face time alone was probably worth the investment, but the kickoff attendees returned home with a wealth of new knowledge and renewed enthusiasm that’s sure to benefit our new and current customers in the year ahead.

Polarion Software took to the road in March, exhibiting at the Embedded World show in Nuremberg, Germany. We were pretty sure that Polarion’s requirements management and test management solutions can benefit many developers of embedded systems, and this show is definitely the place to meet them. The response and interest at our booth were better even than we dared hope for, and we’re quite sure it was not just due to the presence of Polarion’s polar bear mascot in the flesh (or should I say “in the fur”?)

One of the things that garnered attention from attendees (and not just because a polar bear was showing it around) was the presence of the Best Quality Tool award Polarion won earlier this year at Software Quality Days in Vienna. But the most intense interest focused on our Automotive and Medical Device solutions. Both industries are heavily into embedded systems development, and Polarion’s Requirements Management, Quality Assurance, Project Management, Change Management, Impact Analysis, Baselines, Reporting, plus templates and embedded standards and best-practices know-how all rolled into in a single, affordable, unified web-based platform solution really struck a chord with many of the embedded developers present. (Or at least enough of them to ensure that our sales team will not get bored any time soon!)

Polarion will be involved at many more events in the coming months. This biggie on the horizon is STAREAST in Orlando, Florida USA. Check our Events Calendar to see where all we’ll be going… and if you will be at any of these events as well, do stop by and say hello. And if you see a stray polar bear… it’s ours.

Polarion polar bear mascot with Polarion trade show
booth staff presenting the Best Quality Tool award

We’re very excited to report that Polarion Software was selected as winner of the “Tool Challenge” event at Software Quality Days, held January 18-19 in Vienna, Austria.

As winners, we were awarded the Best Quality Tool Award 2012 by the conference board. Polarion faced stiff competition from the likes of IBM, Tricentis, Seapine and GFB Softwareentwicklung.

Software Quality Days is the largest event focusing on software quality in Austria and one of the largest ones in the world. The “Tool Challenge” is a competition that allows vendors to present their solution by solving a practice-related task live in front of the audience. The winning solution is chosen by a special jury together with the audience, the winner receives the Best Quality Tool Award.

Polarion would like to thank the selection panel for the award which recognized the strength of our solution, which was presented by Tim Ströbele, Manager of Professional Services at Polarion Software.

Polarion's Uwe Bucher accepts the Best Quality Tool Award 2012 on behalf of Polarion Software at Software Quality Days in Vienna Austria.

Martin Klotzberg, CEO of our Austrian Country Partner covalgo consulting GmbH: „We are proud to be a part of the Polarion community, together with Polarion we will capture the Austrian market. A few years ago we decided to become a partner of Polarion. The reason behind this decision was that Polarion fits perfectly with our consulting philosophy. This award once more points out our choice for this trendsetting tool was correct.”

New to Polarion?

If you’ve followed a link here and would like to learn more about Polarion’s award-winning solution, we would be happy to guide you. Below are some links that can help you get started.

Polarion has 1 fully-integrated application lifecycle management platform with several products that enable users to access different feature sets. The two products that have the features that won the Tool Challenge are:

• Polarion ALM: Product Info — Trial Options
• Polarion REQUIREMENTS: Product Info — Trial Options

Links to some resources:

• Whitepapers
• Tutorial Videos
• What Polarion Customers Say

If we can help you or answer some questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.