Borland has acquired Gauntlet Systems for technology to improve firms’ application development processes

Development tools vendor Borland continued its push into the application lifecycle management (ALM) market yesterday by acquiring application quality assurance specialist Gauntlet Systems.

The deal further underlines Borland's desire to be seen as an ALM software vendor after the company last month announced plans to acquire software testing outfit Segue and sell off its integrated development environment (IDE) toolset, which faces a growing challenge from alternative open source development tools, such as those offered by the Eclipse Foundation.

Borland said Gauntlet's technology will be integrated with its own ALM system and will help firms detect problems earlier in the development process by automatically pre-screening all new code against a set of quality guidelines before it enters the build process.

Sam Pullara, former chief executive of Gauntlet and now chief architect at Borland, said the new functionality would reduce application development costs and project times for firms.

“We formed Gauntlet to address an ongoing challenge that development teams face - the ability to control code quality early in the process when bugs are easier and cheaper to fix, and before they have the potential to impact other people’s work or delay a project,” he added.

The Gauntlet portfolio also includes new reporting capabilities that provide IT managers with dashboards to monitor project status and developer performance, said Borland said.