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Historically we have always had a very small percentage of our revenue as services. As our customer base has grown (over 4,000 customer sites as of last month), requests for customizations, training, new reports, new metrics, new analysis features have increased to the point where we need to have an organized way of responding.

Towards that end we’ve created a Professional Services group within Scitools. Currently it is a Lead Engineer (Rob Shurtliff – a senior engineer with a number of years experience providing professional services) and three other engineers. We can matrix a variety of other engineers with special skills through the group as well.

So what can the new Scitools PSG do for you?

http://www.scitools.com/products/proservices.php

has the details.  But in short, anything related to improving your benefit from using our tools. That could include training, special scripts, new metrics, adding an assembler or other language, helping you create architectures, a multi-site metrics collection system. Whatever you need that depends on our technology.

Our new Scitools PSG works in these ways:

•  fixed price deliverable – we agree on a deliverable. You pay when we deliver and you are happy.
•  on going hourly  – this is for ongoing work; a budget or contract is set, we bill against it.
•  retainer – the group sells 40, 80 and 200 hour retainers. There are also product bundles that include licenses and service hours. When you have a need they tell you the hours required and after your e-mailed approval they proceed.

If you have something in mind e-mail our support@scitools.com folks.

You will notice that our website (http://www.scitools.com) is completely redone.  This coincides with Understand 2.0’s release and with the Engineer, Pro, and Analyst versions of Understand.

I hope you like it. If you notice anything bogus, please e-mail.

Concurrent to Understand 2.0’s movement from beta to release we are also announcing some product structure changes.

2.0 adds a lot of features, but not all those features are of interest to all engineers.  Or if of interest, then some do not need the same level of functionality.  And not all features require the same support (one of our major expenses).  And, frankly, some of those features are worth more to some customers than others (I’m not going to hide that we do hope to make some more money).

To make sure that customers can buy tools closer to their exact needs Understand 2.0 is offered in four different levels. The “lowest”, Understand Engineer offers what 1.4 offered.  So the segmentation mainly involves new features only. The four levels are:

1. Understand 2.0 Non-Commercial
   This version has all features of the highest Understand level, but only supports C/C++/Java and C#.
   We are still finalizing license agreements for this version, but it is intended for use by students and open source developers.
   If you wish to be notified when it is available, just e-mail sales@scitools.com.  We can supply temp codes to permit use until the final shrinkwrap agreement for this version is finished.  The eventual license will be an annual license.
   
   
2. Understand 2.0 Engineer
   This version supports C/C++/Java and C#.  Understand Engineer provides similar capabilities to Understand 1.4 including the excellent navigation, graphics, maintenance editor, reporting and project metrics. 2.0 adds combined language analysis, basic change analysis, single scenario maintenance estimations and metrics charts/graphs.  Our standard for this version was that it be better than 1.4 but cost the same. One key difference, Understand Engineer will not be offered with a floating license. For that, get Pro or Analyst.
   
   
3. Understand 2.0 Pro
   This version comes in two language variants – L1 (C/C++/Java/FORTRAN) and L2 (L1+Ada, PL/M, Jovial). It provides all the capabilities of Understand Engineer, but offers advanced snapshot based change analysis, a full set of metrics, broader metrics charting capabilities, and multi-scenario maintenance estimation.  We envision Understand Pro as what a team would typically outfit an engineer with if they are trying to create a rigourous programming environment.
   
   
4. Understand 2.0 Analyst
   This version also comes in L1 and L2 language variants. It provides Pro capabilities, plus advanced multi-snapshot change analysis and change metrics, detailed multi-time metrics charting, and multi-scenario/multi-plan maintenance estimation. We’ve also placed API development in Analyst, although scripts or API programs built with Analyst can be used by Pro or Engineer versions of Understand 2.0 .  We envision Analyst as what an IVV, QA, Test team members would use, and also as something a team operating in a rigorous environment would have a license or two available as team members rolled through IVV/metrics analysis/change analysis roles. 
   

THe exact differences can best be seen by running 2.0 and alternating Run Levels via the Help menu.  Or you can check out the feature comparison matrix on our revised website.

What about 1.4 licenses?   Understand for C++, Java, FORTRAN map to Understand 2.0 Pro with their respective languages and API usage enabled.  Understand for Ada, JOVIAL and PL/M licenses map to Understand 2.0 Analyst licenses with their respective languages enabled.  Combined language analysis is avialable but will consume a legacy license for each language. No new license is needed, your existing ones will work.   If you want to have your licenses upgraded to L1 or L2 language packs then our sales@scitools.com folks can help with quotations for that.

What about TrackBack?   TrackBack is a cool product that helps us every day. We are fully committed to TrackBack and plan near term improvements for it.  But it will be part of Understand 2.0 going forward.  We just think it is something that every engineer should have.  It will be in each Understand 2.0 kit.  Customers who have TrackBack but not Understand will be sent a download link for updating separate from Understand.

I’ll caveat that the features between the versions can change, and probably will, once we get feedback from customers and experience selling this way. 

At the beginning of July we released Understand 2.0. It represented the culmination of about 3 years of work where we maintained and improved Understand 1.4 while simultenously developing a brand new version of Understand.

Our goal for 2.0 was to make a tool that is a “must have” if you are maintaining code (and who isn’t??). 

If you are using Understand 2.0 I encourage you to update with each release. It is a young version and has a number of bug fixes and improvements introduced each week.

In particular, if you are a Unix user you will want to at least update to B448 released today. It has a fix in it for the problem of lost application settings (fonts, font sizes, window locations, etc…) on systems that have daily or more frequent clearing of their /tmp directories.

Thanks,

Ken N.

Maintenance Estimation

Has your boss ever dropped by and asked “How hard would it be to add X functionality”, or “What’s involved in fixing that bug in Y”?    Some call this activity “Software Estimation”, others “Change Scoping”, and still others “SWAG” (sophisticated wild assed guessing).   Since we are focused on tools for software maintenance, we call it “Maintenance Estimation”.

Understand has been used to assist in Maintenance Estimation since we first offered it.  This traditionally involved collecting metrics of the code involved, identifying and comprehending dependencies (call tree usually), and mashing it all together into an informed estimate.  Enough customers told us of how they used Understand in that role that we decided that 2.0 should have features directly supporting it. 

And thus the new “Estimate” menu was born.  “Estimate” helps engineers prepare, measure and assess plans for software modifications and enhancements.  It is focused on supporting scoping of changes to existing code.  It supports specifying new code to be hooked into existing code. 

The “Estimate” menu inside Understand 2.0 offers personal Maintenance Estimation by a single engineer.  A tool we will release later this year, tenatively called “Impact”, permits combined multi-user estimation that can integrate plans and estimates from multiple engineers planning maintenance on the same body of source code.

Build 447 will contain the first public release of the “Estimate” feature of 2.0.    It is brand new and we release it more for comments/suggestions than for you to do large amounts of estimating work with.  We wanted to get some early feedback so we could have time to respond to it as we finalize other features in the tool.

So please give it a try. I’ll go over the concepts below the fold.  Your feedback is very welcome.

Recently we switched our download system so that downloaders are offered the Understand 2.0 beta ahead of Understand 1.4.  This is because we feel that even though not 100% feature complete, the beta is a better tool for what most of our customers use Understand for than 1.4.

That download page change reflects how close we are to taking Understand 2.0 off beta.  Remaining features we want to add before doing that are:

• external editor integration (for instance using EMACS as the source editor)
• external application control of Understand (permitting other apps to launch Understand views/graphs)
• user tools (permitting users to integrate with make, CM and other external system commands)
• poster / n-page printing of graphics

All of these are 2–3 weeks away… so the time is approaching.

Naturally most of our development effort is directed at Understand 2.0, but Understand 1.4 will not be ignored:

• we will continue to release new builds of Understand 1.4 for 4–6 months. These builds will include:
• all parser changes
• crash fixes
• no new features will be added except for parser and things common to 2.0, like the PERL and C APIs
  
• after 4–6 months, we will stop making new builds of 1.4 weekly. However, we can and will make new builds as we encounter and fix critical errors reported by users still depending on it.

Note that all current Understand 1.4 licenses will operate 2.0 as well. If you are under maintenance, enjoy 2.0. If you aren’t, give it a try and see if coming back under maintenance is worth the money. If so, e-mail sales@scitools.com to ask for a maintenance renewal quotation.  As usual, it is an honor system. We hope you understand doing things like 2.0 (and 2.1, 2.2, so forth) takes money and we hope you feel Understand 2.0 and our support efforts are worth the cost.

I hope this plan seems reasonable to you. None of this is cast in stone, so feel free to send concerns, compliments or suggestions  to support@scitools.com.

Regards,

Ken Nelson
President
Scitools

Welcome to our new Blog.

Why have a blog?  We feel, strongly, that an educated customer base is a purchasing customer base – so call it enlightened self interest.  But even more so, we go to great lengths to write our tools and we want our users to know as much as they can about how they work and what they can do.

In keeping with our usual “just the facts” approach, this blog will be relatively void of marketing hype. I bill it inside the company as the “Engineers Blog” – a place where our product developers can give and get information to help make using our tools a better experience for all.

From time to time there may be a marketing thing or two, like when we introduce a new product. But mostly it will be ‘just the facts”.

My initial use of the system (Moveable Type 4.1 hosting and BlogJet posting) has shown posting to be very easy. So I expect in a few weeks we should have all Scitools engineers involved.

Regards,

Ken Nelson
President
Scitools