Contents
What is OSLC?
OSLC: an open community
OSLC: a set of specifications for integrating software
An open community building practical specifications for integrating software.
Why does it matter?
See also:
OSLC frees you to focus on your core competencies by enabling you to create software using reusable and open assets that will interoperate with other tools both inside and outside your influence providing time and cost savings.
For instance, you can build one interface to interoperate with multiple tools, and which eliminates rework caused by changes in tool versions.
Mock quote: “OSLC allows us to improve our time-to-market of our product, increase the effectiveness and value of our software development investments, and decrease related costs.”
OSLC reduces the complexity and risk of increasingly complex software infrastructures, and improves the value of software across a broader set of internal and external stakeholders.
For example, you will be better able to integrate disjointed workflows and reuse information more efficiently, while at the same time reducing the integration costs and proprietary concerns attributed to the use of less open software.
Mock quote: “Software, and it’s integration, is a cost of creating our products. OSLC helps minimize that cost while also improving and increasing our capabilities. OSLC helps us deliver better quality products sooner.”
OSLC enables you to choose the best tools, independent of vendor and version, for your job and have them interact seamlessly to achieve traceability and visibility with the rest of your organization.
For instance, a QA professional can view requirements that are managed by a requirements management tool, and create live links between test cases and requirements, without leaving the test management tool.
Mock quote: “Thanks to OSLC, I can simply follow links to navigate between related requirements, design elements, work items and test cases across our multi-vendor toolset.”
Mock quote: “Because of historic integration problems, we used to have to use back levels of all the tools. With our OSLC-enabled toolset we use the latest releases of our preferred software and still have integration with the rest of our organization.”
System Integrators
OSLC enables you to focus energy and resources on higher-value customizations, deliver more business value to your clients, and increase client satisfaction.
Its common and simple approach reduces the time and money you need to spend building and maintaining tool-level integrations.
Mock quote: “OSLC gives us a standard way to solve our client’s disparate integration challenges and allows us to spend more time helping them address their core business needs.”
Randy Vogel, Accenture: “[OSLC] … gives our consultants the flexibility to make lifecycle tool choices based on specific client project demands.”
Influencers
OSLC enables users, developers and third parties to realize increased value and opportunity through improved and open integration of software, and it incites innovation in both software and service communities.
This will allow companies and tool suppliers to bridge historically isolated areas of technology and business workflows, and encourages new applications to be developed that unlock the latent value of a customer’s data.
Allan Behrens, Taxal: “The OSLC’s move to deliver practical and more open software interoperability should sit well with companies and developers alike, providing simpler and more robust re-use and integration of (often multi-vendor) applications and data sets. Acting as an enabler, it also helps innovative software and service companies look at new ways to deliver added value to their customers’ workflows.”
Other communities and projects focused on interoperability
E.g.: SPRINT, CESAR, iFEST, MBAT …
