CA Boosts DevOps With Oxford-Based Grid-Tools Acquistion

CA Technologies has acquired Oxford-based Grid-Tools in a move that adds to its growing range of software development offerings.

Grid-Tools, founded in 2004, offers enterprise-grade products for streamlining the software testing process, with major financial institutions, government agencies, telecommunications companies, insurance firms and media companies amongst its clients.

Agile development

The company, which previously worked with CA as a partner, says its products are suitable for conventional or agile environments and can significantly reduce project costs and delivery times.

Terms of the arrangement were not disclosed.

The deal follows CA’s recent purchase of Rally Software, which offers cloud-based systems for managing complex software development projects, for $480 million (£315m).

Grid-Tools’ flagship product is Datamaker, which generates what the company calls synthetic test data, which it says provides higher quality than the subsets of sanitised production data typically used in software testing.

The company says the product can reduce testing time by as much as 50 percent. Datamaker also organises the centralisation and sharing of test data. Another product, Agile Designer, allows teams to design test cases that can be executed by Datamaker.

Several British banks have used Grid-Tools’ products, as well as energy analysis firm PowerAdvocate and credit card service company ActiveCard.

Developer tools

CA’s main business remains in mainframe software, but has grown its range of offerings in areas such as enterprise mobility and software development.

Grid-Tools said its testing products are a valuable addition to CA’s enterprise software development range.

“The combination of CA Technologies and Grid-Tools provides enterprises with a strong option to bring testing to the next level by removing bottlenecks in their software development lifecycle,” said Grid-Tools co-founder Huw Price in a statement.

Do you know all about tech and education? Take our quiz.