Platform deployed to improve software security & quality

According to the Oil & Gas Journal, the E&P industry will spend $250 billion on exploration and drilling in 2014 in the US alone, up 9.3 percent from last year. The operators of these wells require high-performance computing solutions to help guide their drilling efforts, and can't afford product crashes and instability. SIGMA³ offers geoscience and engineering solutions for these companies, advising clients on field development/planning, well placement and completions design to maximize production.

SIGMA³ is leveraging the Coverity platform to test its code automatically throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC), enabling it to find and fix critical quality and security issues earlier in the development process, and deliver high-quality, secure software to its customers, more efficiently and quickly. The latest version of the SIGMA³ CRYSTAL™ 3D integrated reservoir characterization solution, which includes approximately 1 million lines of C++ code, is now 'Coverity Clean' – all critical, Coverity platform-found defects such as buffer overflows and null pointer dereferences have been found and fixed.

"The age of software in our industry can be 20-25 years old in many cases, and often this technology is not actively maintained, leading to long-standing software defects that lead to non-productive time for clients," said Sean Spicer, chief software architect and lead developer for SIGMA³. "The Coverity platform enables us to find and eliminate these defects systematically, enabling our development and testing teams to focus their attention on improving functionality for clients instead of reproducing random crash bugs. SIGMA³ customers are the ultimate beneficiaries of this effort. We are confident in the quality and reliability of our technology, and proud to call our latest release 'Coverity Clean.'"

"Finding and fixing software quality and security issues at the earliest point in the development lifecycle is a critical component for businesses to remain competitive," said Sunil Nagdev, senior vice president of Global Services for Coverity. "We are committed to arming developers across the globe with tools to create better software and deliver more value to their customers. We commend SIGMA³ for its dedication to high-quality software and its initiative to share its best practices with the broader developer community."