Adding to a growing portfolio of software development applications, CA Technologies has acquired Grid-Tools, whose software automates the process of testing newly-built applications.
CA customers will be able to use Grid-Tools’ products to build software using agile development methodologies, in which small teams work in close collaboration to quickly build and update large applications.
Last week, CA announced it is purchasing for $480 million Rally Software, which offers a set of software and cloud services to help developers manage complex software projects.
Testing newly developed software can be one of the most time-demanding parts of the development lifecycle. All features and all possible workflows must be tested to ensure they work correctly. The testing bottleneck can be particularly onerous to organizations that need to update their software quickly for competitive reasons.
The Grid-Tools’ Datamaker software automates the testing process, which could considerably cut the time required to release a new software product or service. It also compiles the results of tests so they can be easily shared across the software team and other business units.
Another Grid-Tools product, called Agile Designer, provides a way to design test cases that can be executed by Datamaker.
A number of British banks have used Grid Tools, as has energy analyst firm PowerAdvocate and credit card service company ActiveCard. Grid Tools, founded in 2004, is based in Oxford, U.K. and maintains an office in New York.
Although it maintains a considerable business in mainframe software, CA has branched out to offer a wider range of cloud and systems management technologies.
For large teams, CA offers a variety of lifecycle management and change management products, such as the CA Application Lifecycle Conductor and CA Endevor, for change management.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.