In a refresh of HP’s application portfolio, the company introduced its new application life-cycle management platform, ALM 11, at the HP Software Universe conference in Barcelona today.

ALM 11 is a Web-based unified system of HP Quality Center (for software quality management) and Performance Center (for application performance testing) that connects all work in one system and automates the workflow process, said Mark Sarbiewski, vice president of product marketing for HP software.

“The core idea is that delivering software is a full-contact team sport, so understanding requirements and validating the work makes it easier to drive workflow when done in one place,” he said. Users can also see what’s been done in real time, such as which defects were fixed or which tests were done, adding visibility that wasn’t there before, Sarbiewski added.

ALM 11 also includes a project planning and tracking capability, pre-built integration with IDEs, and automatic importation of business process models into its requirements management technology.

“[ALM 11] helps align everyone around the business process to ensure they understand how the work they are doing links back to that,” Sarbiewski said.

In addition to the ALM 11 platform, HP also enhanced and added several solutions for application life-cycle management:

•    LoadRunner 11.0, HP’s load and performance testing tool, can now test rich Internet applications. The reinvented version enables testing from within the browser where users can develop and record scripts, and read scripts in plain-language descriptions, Sarbiewski said.
•    HP Sprinter, a new module that automates manual testing activities such as setting up data and driving repetitive tasks across multiple environments.
•    For rapid application delivery, HP Agile Accelerator 4.0 manages agile development projects with predefined workflows and configurations.
•    HP Unified Functional Testing 11.0, a combination of HP Functional Test and HP Service Test 11.0, is an automated solution used to reduce application functional defects for both GUI and non-GUI testing.