TORONTO, CANADA, 10 June 2003, – Osellus Inc. today launched IRIS, the software industry's first process automation system based on the SPEM (Software Process Engineering Metamodel) specifications from OMG (Object Management Group).

SPEM was specifically developed to address the unique and complex nature of software processes. Utilizing many of the UML concepts, the specification is a response to the lack of open industry standards for describing (modeling) development processes in a detailed and comprehensive manner.

“IRIS evolved out of our own experience of developing large enterprise software applications,” says Aditya Jha, president of Osellus Inc. “Because software development is such a complex undertaking, implementing the supporting processes are critical to the success of any development initiative. With SPEM, software development teams can now model and put in practice their processes without getting locked into proprietary constructs.”

Software development organizations use IRIS to model, enact and monitor their software development processes. “The biggest value of a process automation system - and the most difficult problem to solve - is the enactment portion,” says Mr. Jha. “Real-time enactment of multiple concurrent processes is an order of magnitude more difficult than process modeling. That is where IRIS's strengths truly become apparent.”

The system is designed to accommodate any software development process, irrespective of the choice of methodology or technology. By being methodology independent, IRIS extends the value of process automation to all forms of software development, including: packaged application development, development of internal enterprise applications, software development outsourcing and embedded software development. An organization's existing investment in development methodologies and development tools are completely preserved and even extended. “We developed IRIS out of the conviction that process automation has a lot to offer irrespective of whether you have adopted an iterative, agile, or highly customized methodology,” adds Mr. Jha.

The IRIS product provides better enforcement of adopted processes, greater visibility over a project, consistency across the development cycle, enhanced developer productivity, higher return on investment in development tools, and auditable processes for quality programs such as CMM. IRIS is designed for managing multiple projects simultaneously, each using the same or different processes, in real-time.

The product's scalable, robust and platform-independent design is attributed to its pure J2EE architecture. IRIS is 100% web-based, including its highly flexible visual modeling interface.

IRIS is available in licensed and hosted forms and is priced on a per-user basis.

About Osellus

Osellus is a leading provider of process improvement and automation solutions for the software development industry. Osellus helps software development organizations select, enhance, model and automate the underlying processes that support their application development efforts. By adopting a process-centric development model, Osellus customers are better positioned to meet their time-to-market, quality and cost objectives.