/> Accelerating software complexity has created a multi-headed challenge for software developers. The criticality, complexity and volume of software have ballooned, creating an exponential increase in software risk. Company profits in automotive and medical are crippled by software-defect product recalls while, according to Forrester, avionics and defense projects commonly experience schedule and budget overruns by a factor of two and deliver only 60% of the expected functionality. Up to 85% of these errors stem from a failure to properly manage requirements. Boeing and Airbus maintain that the expense of identifying an error during first flight increases costs up to 900 times than if the error had been identified early in the development process.

To enable companies to cope with the exorbitant costs systemic in current development processes, LDRA and Visure have designed Embed-X to streamline software development to deliver 50% cost savings. This industry-first embedded application lifecycle management for critical systems coordinates software engineering by integrating project management, requirements management, architecture, coding, software configuration management and testing. ALM solutions automate and enforce processes between the stages of development, manage relationships between assets used or produced by the software, and offer transparency and metrics through reports on development as it progresses.

“For the first time, software developers will be able to manage the micro-detail fundamental to embedded applications,” noted Baldo Rincón, Managing Director of Visure Solutions. “Embed-X shares requirements and system components and creates an open forum between software developers and engineers taking care of mechanical and electrical details. Because of bidirectional Lifecycle Traceability, requirements are no longer isolated in repositories, but dynamically updated throughout the system.”

Building on LDRA’s strengths in the critical software marketplace and Visure’s experience delivering requirements solutions, Embed-X is geared to meet the demands of safety-critical development standards. Incorporating LDRA’s patent-pending verification management technology, Embed-X will help system engineering, development and production organizations by coherently tracing requirements through static and dynamic analysis to unit testing and system verification to achieve a fully certified application. Embed-X offers compliance with DO-178B, MISRA, and security standards, such as CERT C and the Homeland Security Agency’s Common Weakness Enumerations (CWE).

“Developers in the safety- and mission-critical space face some of the most stringent certification requirements,” noted Ian Hennell, LDRA Operations Director. “Many companies still attempt to track many of the processes needed for certification manually—a feat often met with disaster. Embed-X automates those processes, removes redundancies between development teams and provides transparency and metrics into the processes to project managers and developers alike.”

Knowing the cost-sensitivity of the embedded market, LDRA and Visure has eased adoption by providing a target license package that incorporates customization and training. Common interfaces seamlessly link the various stages of Embed-X to provide a uniform product GUI. Now, instead of dealing with individual tools for project planning, requirements engineering, change management, product and certification documentation and verification, these activities are synchronized by Embed-X across a network of collaborative users.

“Embed-X represents a breakthrough for the embedded world,” stated Hennell. “Embed-X makes the entire development process visible and its assets tangible. Embed-X will not only slash development and certification costs, it will also greatly enhance management processes.”