Harris & Jeffries announces Soft-ATM Toolkit that dramatically accelerates the development of ATM products.DEDHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 13, 1997-- New "Ultimate Toolkit" integrates tools with Software architecture to facilitate the porting, integration and maintenance of ATM products Harris and Jeffries, Inc. (H&J) announced today the release of the Soft-ATM Toolkit. This toolkit enables manufacturers to reduce ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode See ATM. (communications) Asynchronous Transfer Mode - (ATM, or "fast packet") A method for the dynamic allocation of bandwidth using a fixed-size packet (called a cell). See also ATM Forum, Wideband ATM. ATM acronyms. Indiana acronyms. ) product development cycles by decreasing development time. These tools enable improved quality, reliability and upgradeability throughout the complete ATM product life-cycle. The company's new Toolkit is a rich suite of tools that are tightly integrated with H&J's powerful Soft-ATM architecture. This synergistic relationship "reduces time, cost, risk, complexity while improving maintainability of ATM products throughout a lifetime of change," according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Ethan Harris, president of Harris & Jeffries. "As a provider of leading-edge ATM software solutions, we are keenly aware of the development needs, limitations and urgencies facing ATM product manufacturers. Our new Toolkit presents a extensible family of tools that dramatically and immediately alleviate many of the pressures being encountered by engineers on a daily basis. For example, proof-of-concept testing can be done in hours rather than days. Debugging effectiveness is quadrupled by finding twice the bugs in the half the time. Product concept to delivery periods can be halved. Regardless of whether you are a developer, Q/A Q/A Question and Answer Q/A Quality Accounting manager, a network engineer or a product support engineer, these tools will have a profound effect in your effectiveness and productivity," he said. "The real return is the combination of these tools with the Soft-ATM architecture. The improvements in development time and performance are dramatic. For example, innovative buffering schemes, consistent APIs and backward compatibility See backward compatible. (jargon) backward compatibility - Able to share data or commands with older versions of itself, or sometimes other older systems, particularly systems it intends to supplant. found within our architecture enable the manufacturer to incorporate new or revised applications in a fraction of the time normally required. As the product evolves and new functionality is added, the backwards compatibility backwards compatibility - backward compatibility saves months of time in bringing new functionality to market. Also, the Harris & Jeffries reputation for high quality, high performance code is the result of our own use of these tools," Harris stated. The Soft-ATM Toolkit is composed of tools that support development and diagnosis activities. Additionally, an extensive set of code modules accelerate the development time by providing code to prototype as well as unit and system test. The integration of these tools with the Soft-ATM architecture provides greater versatility for user customization and performance leverage than is currently available on the market. The Soft-ATM Toolkit is currently included with all Soft-ATM subsystems. Major additions are planned to extend these tools and will be separately priced and packaged, the company said. Tools Improve Effectiveness at All Phases of the Product Lifecycle Product lifecycle or product life cycle is the course of a product's sales and profits over time. The five stages of each product lifecycle are product development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. From design, development, test, and deployment to run-time product support, the Soft-ATM Toolkit, in combination with the Soft-ATM architecture, dramatically improves the effectiveness of the manufacturer and their customers to do the task at hand for every phase of the product's life cycle. Product Design An analysis tool is provided that enables the engineer to evaluate the underlying platform and processor power to meet the target product performance goals. Included with the Soft-ATM product is a comprehensive set of prototype code and Test applications. This code enables the engineer to quickly prototype and evaluate software and hardware functionality. Additional Porting files are provided that has been tested and ported to the most popular Real-time Operating systems (RTOS (1) (RealTime Operating System) An operating system designed for use in a real time computer system. See real time system, embedded system, process control and OS-9. ). Test applications can be used in conjunction with the Soft-ATM Traces and Probes. Product Development Traces and Probes provide incredible flexibility and power to analyze ATM product behavior and capture state changes and system events. Traces capture systems events including protocol errors, call state changes and posted IPC (1) (InterProcess Communication) The exchange of data between one program and another either within the same computer or over a network. It implies a protocol that guarantees a response to a request. messages. Probes provide a window on the traffic flowing between system layers. They can be inserted at points between software layers. Probes can be dynamically controlled through the Soft-ATM management API. Also, if the target RTOS is VxWorks, probes can be managed by the Tornado debug To correct a problem in hardware or software. Debugging software means locating the errors in the source code (the program logic). Debugging hardware means finding errors in the circuit design (logical circuits) or in the physical interconnections of the circuits. console. Probes also allow data to be copied to an external file for further decoding and analysis. Loopback code facilitates subsystem testing in the Soft-ATM architecture. Loopbacks can be enabled at system layers and provide the flexibility to test a layer independently during porting. This allows the developer to quickly isolate problems to a specific layer for faster debugging, independent of hardware development. Network Operation/ Customer Support The effectiveness of Network operations is dramatically improved by being able to dynamically evaluate product behavior and to generate sample test suites that can quickly aid in detecting errors and bottlenecks. Traces and probes can be designed to be dynamically enabled with the product running in an operational environment. "As a developer of ATM management and analysis solutions, the Soft-ATM family of tools and code from Harris & Jeffries, Inc. has saved Net2Net months of development time," said Steve McCalmont, president and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Net2Net. "The functionality of their toolkit provided an excellent foundation for us to quickly develop applications for protocol monitoring, decode and analysis instrumentation. Because of the strength of Harris & Jeffries signalling code, Net2Net sells the highest performing UNI simulation in the market," Mr. McCalmont continued. Extensive Family of Soft-ATM functionality The Soft-ATM family of ATM products has the broadest capabilities in the industry. Whether product deployment occurs for the desktop, the enterprise backbone, or the central office switch, the Soft-ATM family meets the needs. All Soft-ATM products are standards compliant and come with a "commercial" interoperability guarantee. H&J's unique Interoperability Guarantee states that the Soft-ATM products will interoperate with other vendor products complying with these same standards. The product family includes ATM Signalling, ILMI ILMI Integrated Local Management Interface ILMI Interim Local Management Interface ILMI Interim Link Management Interface (ATMF) ILMI Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor (US National Park Service) , LAN Emulation, PNNI (Private Network-to-Network Interface) A routing protocol used between ATM switches in an ATM network. It lets the switches inform each other about network topology so they can make appropriate forwarding decisions. (signalling & routing), Classical IP over ATM, MPoA Client, ATM/Frame Relay Interworking (standard) interworking - Systems or components, possibly from different origins, working together to perform some task. Interworking depends crucially on standards to define the interfaces between the components. , and ports for specific SARs and popular operating systems About Harris & Jeffries, Inc. Harris & Jeffries, Inc. is the industry's ultimate ATM Software source. H&J provides its source code to networking manufacturers, OEMs and integrators worldwide. Its software incorporates high-performance, advanced architecture, and a leading-edge engineering toolkit to enable customers to achieve fast time-to-market, reduced development costs and technically advanced products with market-leading performance capabilities. H&J's expertise includes ATM, frame relay, network management, SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) A widely used network monitoring and control protocol. Data are passed from SNMP agents, which are hardware and/or software processes reporting activity in each network device (hub, router, bridge, etc. , RISC RISC in full Reduced Instruction Set Computing Computer architecture that uses a limited number of instructions. RISC became popular in microprocessors in the 1980s. , real-time operating, embedded and proprietary systems. Its products are in use by over 100 major networking companies worldwide. Visit H&J at the following upcoming shows: SUPERCOMM Booth #4417, AFCEA AFCEA Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association Booth #333 and ATM Year 97 Booth 1330. T/N T/N Transaction T/N Tomorrow Next T/N True Name (legal) T/N Total Nitrogen (617) 329-3200 E-Mail:info@hjinc.com URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. : http://www.hjinc.com -0- Soft-ATM and High-Performance Frame Relay are trademarks of Harris & Jeffries, Inc. All other trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective holders. CONTACT: Harris & Jeffries, Inc. 617/329-3200, Chris Berluti info@hjinc.com or The Strayton Group, Inc. Rob Strayton 508/655-6965 strayton@ultranet.com |
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