Electric Cloud, the leading provider of Software Delivery Acceleration solutions, today announced an industry-first solution optimized for Android that dramatically reduces delivery times by up to 75 percent. Introduced at the 2013 Android Builders Summit, the solution helps Android device manufacturers succeed in today’s highly competitive and fast-paced mobile and embedded devices marketplace by accelerating end-to-end Android software build, test, and release cycles.

Today’s Android device vendors face many challenges. With new versions of the Android operating system being released at a rapid pace, the delivery of new devices is largely based on how quickly device makers can build, test, and release their devices for each version of Android OS.

“Since MIPS is a key architecture used extensively throughout the Android ecosystem, we are constantly seeking ways to help our OEM partners bring high quality Android-based products to market in the shortest possible timescale. Thanks to the solution that Electric Cloud has developed, we’ve been able to significantly reduce Android build and test cycles while improving quality,” said Tony King-Smith, vice president of marketing, Imagination Technologies. Imagination has recently acquired MIPS Technologies, Inc.—and with it the industry-standard MIPS microprocessor architecture.

“Android device manufacturers face an enormous challenge, namely how to speed time-to-market for Android devices without sacrificing quality,” said Steve Brodie, CEO of Electric Cloud. “Market share capture depends in large part on how quickly Android device makers can build, test, and release innovative, high-quality software that differentiates their devices. Our new software delivery solution for Android helps customers such as Imagination Technologies automate and greatly accelerate processes across the entire product lifecycle, enabling them to gain the first-mover advantage.”

A January 2013 survey conducted by Electric Cloud of over 175 Android software device delivery professionals indicates that slow time-to-market, growing complexity of software release processes, and poor software quality are the key challenges confronting most organizations today. More than 70 percent of the respondents reported long release builds (20 minutes to 4 hours) and testing cycles (1-8 hours), demonstrating that slow, unreliable builds and tests were major bottlenecks for device delivery release cycles.

“Over the past year, the Android device market has exploded. In this highly competitive market, value-added software is the key differentiator,” said Christopher Rommel, Vice President of M2M & Embedded Technology at VDC Research. “However, releasing quality software on the Android OS is a non-trivial and time consuming task. Having an integrated software delivery solution that simplifies, automates, and accelerates the entire software development lifecycle — from development through build, test, and release — can give Android device manufacturers a distinct competitive advantage by helping them deliver high-quality devices much faster.”

The new Android workflow-based solution is integrated with Electric Cloud’s award-winning ElectricCommander and ElectricAccelerator platforms, providing end-to-end application delivery automation. Key components include:
• Build Acceleration – The fastest build acceleration solution for Android on the market, ElectricAccelerator’s patented dependency management technology provides up to 40 percent improvement for incremental developer builds.
• Android workflow solution and test acceleration – ElectricCommander provides an out-of-the-box workflow template for Android and test parallelization capabilities to accelerate testing cycles including Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) by up to 75 percent.
• Professional Services Package – Service offering to get customers up and running quickly on the new solution for Android.

The integrated solution for Android is available at the end of March; interested parties should contact Electric Cloud for pricing.

About Electric Cloud Electric Cloud delivers solutions that automate and accelerate the software delivery process. The company’s award-winning products help development organizations to speed time-to-market, boost developer productivity, and improve software quality while leveraging the operational efficiencies provided by virtual cloud infrastructures. Leading companies across a variety of industries, including financial services, ISVs, mobile devices, semiconductors, and transactional websites, rely on Electric Cloud’s software delivery solutions. For more information, visit http://www.electric-cloud.com.