Electric Cloud Optimizes Software Production for Android Device Manufacturers

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Aug. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Electric Cloud®, the leading provider of software production management (SPM) solutions, today announced enhanced support for Android development environments with the creation of new ElectricCommander plugins for the Gerrit and Git development tools as well as support for automated testing on Android devices. The company also announced improvements to ElectricAccelerator designed to support fast Android software builds. These enhancements automate and accelerate software production processes for both pure-Android and cross-platform device development.

In order to stay competitive and leverage the features of the latest technology, device manufacturers must be able to quickly integrate the latest Android releases into their production workflow. Because many manufacturers support more than one device platform and multiple build and test environments, the software production process becomes quite complex.

"Tools for automating and streamlining development processes will be essential to sustain the growth of Android devices," said Martin Van Ryswyk, Vice President of Engineering for Electric Cloud. "Manufacturers looking to harness the speed of open-source innovation and get their products to a demanding enterprise market with a high degree of quality need effective tools to integrate, accelerate and automate their development processes."

Electric Cloud's ElectricCommander and ElectricAccelerator solutions are optimized for Android development environments, improving manufacturers' ability to deliver devices on time and with high software quality.

ElectricCommander speeds the development cycle by coordinating the entire software production process and supporting multiple operating systems, devices, and versions with a single interface.  The new ElectricCommander plugins are tailored specifically to handle the complexity of Android device software development. One of these plugins enables direct interaction with physical test devices using the Android Data Bridge (ADB) protocol and Fastboot technology.  This allows ElectricCommander to flash images, push applications, and execute code directly on an Android device enabling fast, frequent testing while minimizing manual intervention.  

ElectricCommander's Gerrit plugin automates the Android code review workflow, speeding what is typically a manual review-test-approve process.  Gerrit notifies a designated expert that a change is ready and these experts approve or decline that submission before continuing the rest of the release process. With the plugin, ElectricCommander can automatically build and test the submission and even act as a reviewer within Gerrit, automatically accepting or declining a submission based on the success or failure of the build and test cycle.

ElectricCommander also supports a plugin for the Git source control system which enables seamless preflight builds, testing and Continuous Integration. The Git plugin automatically extracts code from the repository, builds using the latest changes in code, runs a specified series of tests and returns results.

Further streamlining the release process, Electric Cloud's ElectricAccelerator shortens the Android build cycle by five times or more through parallel processing and dependency management. ElectricAccelerator ensures the complete technology stack – not just the Android kernel – builds quickly and accurately. ElectricAccelerator runs on multiple platforms, including the latest versions of Ubuntu Linux, a popular platform for Android development.

About Electric Cloud

Electric Cloud is the leading provider of software production management (SPM) solutions. Electric Cloud solutions automate, accelerate and analyze software build-test-deploy processes to optimize both physical and virtual IT environments. The company's patented and award-winning products help development organizations to speed time to market, boost developer productivity, and improve software quality. Leading companies across a variety of industries, including semiconductors, enterprise IT, ISVs, mobile devices, and transactional Web sites rely on Electric Cloud's Software Production Management solutions to transform software production from a liability to a competitive advantage. For customer inquiries please contact Electric Cloud at (408) 419-4300 or www.electric-cloud.com.

© 2003-2010 Electric Cloud, Inc. All rights reserved. Electric Cloud, ElectricInsight, ElectricAccelerator, Electric Make and SparkBuild are trademarks of Electric Cloud. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE Electric Cloud