Esterel Technologies, the leading worldwide provider of model-based development solutions for critical systems, and Altran, the European leader in innovation consulting and high technology, today announced a strategic global partnership. The partnership will offer a comprehensive critical systems and software development capability.

Altran’s solution centres in the UK, France, Germany and Italy will create Esterel SCADE Suite and SCADE display competence centres, which will enable them to offer critical embedded systems and software design, validation, verification, and integration services capabilities using Esterel Technologies market-leading SCADE Suite and SCADE display products and expertise.

Altran brings its recognised global deployment capacity of very large teams. It will also apply its deep vertical domain knowledge in all critical industries, such as aerospace, defence, railways, automotive, and energy, as well as its own world-leading solution centre in embedded and critical systems, with its SPARK verification technology for high assurance software.

Key customer benefits of this association include:

  • De-risking of development programmes
  • Cost reduction of systems and software development projects, in particular for demanding certification environments such as DO-178B or DEF STD 00-56 in aerospace and defence, EN 50128 in railways, IEC 61508 in the industry, IEC 60880 in the nuclear energy domain and ISO 26262 in automotive
  • Reuse of applications platforms across projects and geographies
  • Agility in development process, including rapid prototyping, fast specifications validation, extensive requirements traceability and production of certification artifacts
  • Unrivalled expertise in graphical user interface human factor analysis, GUI modelling and automated production

The partnership means that developers of both mission and safety-critical embedded control applications and critical embedded graphics displays will benefit from time savings and product quality improvements.

Esterel Technologies and Altran already share numerous customers in the mission-critical domains of aerospace, defence, space, rail, and industrial applications. Example applications include cockpit displays, weapon launch controls, landing controls, mission control, control station displays and computer-based train control.

“For critical application developers, this strategic association dramatically shortens time-to-certification and deployment while ensuring product quality,” said Eric Bantegnie, president and CEO of Esterel Technologies.

“This global partnership, builds on the recent creation of Altran’s worldwide solution practice for embedded and critical systems and enables Altran to deliver SCADE projects wherever our clients demand,” said Keith Williams, embedded and critical systems executive director of Altran.

The partnership will also include cooperation on critical systems technology strategy. Esterel Technologies has a long established relationship with Altran’s solution centre in embedded and critical systems. Together they are working to integrate their respective technologies via a SCADE-to-SPARK code generator which will afford users the benefits of both technologies: model-driven development with the assurance of a secure programming language and associated verification tool suite.