When it closed the Telelogic acquisition back in early April, IBM heavily promoted the potential of using Telelogic’s systems engineering capabilities to insinuate itself on the bridge between ALM and product lifecycle management (PLM). The operating notion is that, as durable goods get smarter, software is playing a growing role in product definition, as it is represented by firmware baked into the electronics.

BigLever, a tiny 7-year old Austin firm that has partnered with Telelogic, provides an offering that infuses the idea of product “features’ into Telelogic’s DOOR requirements management. In essence, it fills a gap not captured by traditional software requirements systems, which tend to be at a much lower level (function and system) than what would be considered a product feature. Grasping for a three-letter acronym, the company characterizes its offerings as Product Line Engineering or, to add a letter and make it more descriptive, Software Product Line Engineering.

Although tiny (the staff numbers only 15), the company has had a number of marquee customers over the years, such as LSI Logic, which has used its feature modeling for designing the CPU of storage servers that were white labeled for clients ranging from IBM to Fujitsu and Cray.

For instance, a functional requirement might include some form of automated control to optimize the speed at which a motor runs, while a system (non-functional requirement) may highlight the need to engineer the logic to optimize the architecture of the embedded microprocessor. Product feature would be a higher-level slice, that relates both requirements to an “energy-saver” feature that applies to specific product families.

BigLever’s product, GEARS, provides a language for describe the features of software products. It includes a modeler for defining features, a profiler for specifying which types of features go into what kinds of products, and “variation points” which signify which elements of a product requirement are core, and which requirements vary based on the features that are assigned to the software product.

Currently, GEARS operates as a plug-in to Telelogic DOORS (requirements management) where requirements can be mapped to GEARS core assets, feature profiles, or variation points; there is also integration with Rhapsody, Telelogic’s embedded software modeling & design tool, and on the horizon, a link with Synergy (Telelogic’s source code management [SCM] /version control offering) is likely.

However, at this point the 15-person company is preoccupied jumping through another set of hoops: getting the product IBM certified for Rational ClearCase integration. Significantly, the company is one of only two Telelogic partners to get on the early “fast track” for Rational certification. Given that it adds a higher layer context to requirements for software products, it is a natural fit with IBM’s strategy to position the Telelogic offerings as a bridge between ALM and PLM, as PLM tools do not address the specific characteristics of software development as a domain, and vice versa. And of course, the firm is so clearly aligned with Telelogic (and eventually, Rational).

But there are many miles for IBM to go to deliver on this vision. First, it will take some time for IBM to absorb the Telelogic acquisition; it’s actually taking more time than the usual IBM deal because of the idiosyncrasies of Swedish corporate law. To give you an idea of how this will take, keep in mind that barely six weeks after officially announcing closing of the deal, Telelogic is still operating as a separate business entity. Telelogic's just-announced refresh of its core products  still carry Telelogic labels and have yet to be “bluewashed” (adding an IBM looking skin). Later on, there will be the challenge of integrating organizations with overlapping product lines that tend to serve different markets.

That’s a long-winded way of us saying that we believe that eventually, we wouldn’t be surprised to see them acquire this modest size, but critically-positioned firm. But we don’t expect this to happen for a while.

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