Attix5 eases multi-platform integration challenges with Microsoft South Africa

Established in 1999, Attix5 is one of South Africa’s most established and widely regarded data protection and security providers.

With a passion for developing world-class data protection that offers clients piece of mind, the organisation has gradually expanded its service offering and now caters to both the enterprise and SME market.

Recently, Attix5 introduced a new product suite, Attix5 Pro V7, to its stable. Developed meet the demands of a growing cloud solutions environment, this technology stack focuses on delivering a comprehensive data protection solution within remotely hosted environments based on the FIPS compliant Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Challenge

Software development and IT management environments require a several essential tools in order to achieve production targets and identify potential difficulties.

Although Attix5 had historically implemented a handful of solutions to administer core elements such as source control, requirements tracking and bug tracking, the cross platform nature of the organisation’s products and projects had begun to demand a more integrated approach.

Employing Delphi, .NET and Java based programming languages and supporting internal and client services on Microsoft’s Windows, Linux and Apple’s Mac OS platforms is a challenging assignment for any development firm. As such, Attix5’s multiple management tools had become challenging to monitor and direct.

To overcome this obstacle, the organisation began its search for a possible alternative.

Solution

After a thorough investigative process Attix5 identified Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server technology as the most effective answer to the challenge of internal integration.
Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a collaborative platform that sits at the core of Microsoft’s application lifecycle solution by supporting multiple development practices, Integrated Development Environments (IDE) and platforms both locally or within the cloud.

This, the company identified, would be best complimented by Microsoft Team Explorer Everywhere (TEE), which provides the tools and plug-ins required to access Team Foundation Server from Eclipse-based environments and non-Windows platforms, and Microsoft Visual Studio (VS), an IDE used to create custom graphical interfaces for websites, web applications and other services in native and managed code for platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft Silverlight.

Although Attix5 initially opted to implement Microsoft TFS 2010, Microsoft TEE 2010 and Microsoft VS 2010 the organisation soon made a decision to upgrade each version to its 2012 standard.

Benefits

The benefits associated with Attix5’s decision to implemented Microsoft TFS 2012 and its supporting platforms have been considerable says Senior Developer, Theodor Kleynhans.

“After a thorough investigation we simply couldn’t find anything better than Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2012 to solve our internal challenge of project integration. Although we had been historically successful using several disparate systems, TFS has conjoined our most critical development and support tools into a unified platform”.

According to Kleynhans, Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2012 is particularly popular among the internal .Net community.

“Our .Net orientated developers are really pleased with the version control TFS offers. It has taken some time to create custom scripts that integrate with our development tools but the platform is now working incredibly smoothly and has certainly enhanced our productivity as an organisation”.

Microsoft’s Team Explorer Everywhere 2012 and Visual Studio 2012 has only served to augment this integration concludes Kleynhans.

“Microsoft TEE 2012 and VS 2012 have really plugged in to our internal infrastructure. They compliment TFS 2012 well and have simplified the development and support process considerably”.

Lending skill and expertise to Attix5’s setup, configuration, customization and upgrades was ALM Partner Imaginet.com.

Imaginet’s Colin Dembovsky, a Microsoft ALM Most Valuable Professional (MVP) based in South Africa set up TFS within Attix5’s environment whilst aiding the transition to modern Agile processes.

“At Imaginet we strive to help customers improve their ALM processes through mentoring, training and on-site consulting,” says Dembovsky. “Our tool of choice for managing almost every aspect of ALM, from requirements management to Agile Planning to source control, testing and lab management is TFS. This is especially true for heterogeneous environments and technologies such as those employed by Attix5.”