Delivering Software to Millions
While Avoiding the 'Bloat'
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The Problem
As a founding and strategic member of the Eclipse Foundation, Genuitec found that its popular MyEclipse integrated development environment (IDE) was becoming too large to be quickly downloaded from its Web site. Genuitec customers also began to complain that the software was becoming "bloated," meaning it took up too much hard drive space, launched slowly on start-up, and was generally packed with valuable features. But, there were so many features that not every software developer needed them all. In short, the value of MyEclipse was high, but usability was suffering.

While Genuitec needed to address the issue of software bloat, the company also wanted to include Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) technology for software teams to collaborate and synchronize on projects. This meant that Genuitec was going to add more software to its IDE but at the same time needed make it smaller and easier to manage. The development goal that seemed impossible at the time: make MyEclipse more robust but smaller at once.

Technical Details

In recognizing that MyEclipse was becoming too large for everyday users, the company took proactive steps to let customers control how much software they needed for any given task. Genuitec wanted its customers to create the exact IDE profile for their job by allowing users to disregard tools and technologies that are not needed from the entire software bundle. The company turned to its own Pulse Private Label software development team for help.

The Resolution
Starting in early 2009, Genuitec began the process of evaluating its own Pulse Private Label technology to learn if it could integrate into MyEclipse as a method to manage all the software components in the IDE bundle. Pulse Private Label was already a recognized software delivery technology, and now Genuitec needed to marry the two technologies.

By the summer of 2009, both the MyEclipse and Pulse Private Label product teams discovered that by taking advantage of the Pulse Private Label application programming interface (API) it could, in fact, serve as both a management and delivery mechanism for MyEclipse.

During the evaluation process, Genuitec architects improved MyEclipse delivery by leveraging Pulse so that new installers could easily be generated to speed up the delivery, thereby eliminating one type of user complaint about the software bloat. This was accomplished by having Pulse generate three types of installers: online installers, offline installers, and Web flow-based installers. Users could then select which they preferred as the most rapid and convenient installation method. With Pulse, MyEclipse successfully accomplished this task on Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems.

Genuitec also began to include collaboration technologies inside MyEclipse, thereby turning Pulse Private Label and MyEclipse into a full-blown ALM technology. The collaboration features in MyEclipse allow for software developers to code on the same projects in real-time and also allows for both rights and restrictions to be placed on which projects team members can access, and the projects that are off limits.

With the overhaul of Pulse Private Label and the integration into MyEclipse complete by winter of 2009, Genuitec offered its customers a way to combat the software bloat. This was accomplished in two ways; the first was from the download page on the MyEclipse Web site: once a user began the download a dashboard appeared with a checklist of all software components that can be installed. By default, the dashboard required users to "opt-in" for each software plug-in or MyEclipse feature they need.

The second method offered customers the ability to select which installation is most convenient and fast. They could now choose from online, offline or Web installations. Combined, both methods accomplished the task of simultaneously making MyEclipse more functional while also easier to manage and smaller in size.

Since implementing software management inside MyEclipse, Genuitec has realized growth in a new market with developers interested in creating their own customized software profiles and it has pleased their millions of current users by reducing the software size so that it takes up less hard drive space, boots up faster upon launch, and gives users control over their development environment.

The Conclusion
Like many successful enterprises, Genuitec found itself having difficulty by offering too much software to please the demands of its growing customer base. Turning to the Pulse team, MyEclipse was able to utilize Pulse's APIs to make their enterprise level software function not only as a delivery mechanism but as a software management console within MyEclipse.

Available now as part of the MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench, Genuitec is delivering a brand new ALM technology to its customers that gives complete control over the management, collaboration and customization of the MyEclipse IDE. Pulse Private Label is available to IT organizations wishing to combat bloated software while also delivering collaboration, management and delivery tools to end-users.

Pulse Private Label is offered under a variety of pricing models. Please contact us to discuss your specific needs.