iTKO, the leading provider of virtualization and validation solutions for modern and cloud-based applications, today announced the general availability of their flagship LISA™ product suite version 5.0. With this release, LISA extends its leadership position with innovative new capabilities to virtualize an even greater range of IT assets for the elimination of system dependency constraints during the development of complex enterprise and cloud-based applications. LISA’s Pathfinder also delivers significant new advancements in providing end-to-end transparency across complex application architectures to dramatically improve defect discovery and collaboration. Because of LISA’s success in the marketplace, iTKO recently announced a strong quarterly finish for the 2009 calendar year representing 103% year-over-year revenue growth.

“Enterprise customers have always been able to rapidly deploy virtual service environments using LISA,” said John Michelsen, Chief Scientist at iTKO. “Now with LISA 5.0, they’ll be able to virtualize practically any IT asset within their enterprise or across their external partner ecosystem. In addition to removing accessibility and availability constraints on dependent systems, they’ll also be able to immediately leverage virtual data scenarios to solve pressing test data management challenges. Version 5.0 represents a major advancement for LISA and is the most significant, feature-rich upgrade in iTKO’s history.”

“LISA’s success continues to grow due to its ability to solve critical time-to-market and risk mitigation challenges for enterprise customers’ software initiatives,” said Siva Ganesan, Global Head of Assurance Services at Tata Consultancy Services. “LISA brings capabilities that can help businesses achieve important competitive advantages in the marketplace. As a result, we’re working to maximize the value LISA brings to our clients by aligning methodologies and expertise so that LISA can be used to drive quality not just for one initiative, but throughout the broader software lifecycle.”

LISA 5.0 includes several new product innovations and capabilities as a result of close collaboration with enterprise customers:

• Powerful and versatile Virtual Service Environments. LISA captures and models inaccessible or unavailable IT resources into virtual service environments that produce the same dynamic behavior, performance and data as the real production systems. LISA virtualization removes dependency constraints during development and delivery, and can be applied to nearly any IT asset or technology environment, including cloud computing. Version 5.0 improvements include an all-new visual modeling user interface and “self-healing” virtual models that can automatically update themselves to reflect new behavior or performance from the production system. LISA 5.0 also includes advanced test data management capabilities to immediately capture realistic data scenarios from live traffic, and automatically de-sensitize and adjust relevant test data with time and situational awareness. To further improve parallel development and developer productivity, a new LISA Virtualize Personal Edition is now offered to enable individuals to access their own customized virtual service environment without online or network access.
• Improved end-to-end transparency, automation and validation. LISA’s Pathfinder provides complete transparency to trace errors to their source across complex architectures spanning multiple application tiers and heterogeneous technologies. This end-to-end coverage includes the latest UI/presentation layer technologies that support Rich Internet Applications (RIA) such as Java Swing, Flash, AJAX, Flex and ActiveX, as well as the underlying middle tiers and backend systems. Pathfinder can now provide transparency across all transaction flows in your architecture, not just those invoked by LISA. Version 5.0 also improves defect discovery with new point-and-click, drill down search and filtering capabilities, and improved continuous validation monitoring.
• New Pathfinder Pro to streamline defect collaboration with no new skills required. LISA’s new Pathfinder Pro builds upon Pathfinder’s transparency and traceability capabilities by enabling fast, streamlined resolution of defects without any new technical skills or processes required for Development and Quality Assurance teams. Using Pathfinder Pro, a QA tester can capture a defect along with complete developer context including all system transactions, performance statistics, logs, and architectural details to ensure defect reproducibility the first time without costly iterations. Defect resolution capabilities include comprehensive, point-and-click drill down comparisons, and defect information that can rapidly be converted into regression tests or used for other purposes.

For more information on LISA, please visit www.itko.com/lisa.