Neopost Advances Software Quality and Product Innovation with Coverity Development Testing

SAN FRANCISCO and PARIS, Jan. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Coverity, the leader in development testing, today announced that Neopost, the European leader for mailing room equipment and logistics systems, is accelerating time to market and product innovation by using Coverity® Static Analysis as its development testing solution. By finding and fixing software defects in the embedded systems integrated in its wide range of professional machines as the code is being written, Neopost has shortened its development time by 50% and has reduced the business risk of critical software defects entering the field.

Neopost has a permanent focus on product quality, providing clients with innovative and efficient tools and systems that help automate and simplify the management of their business mail, such as folding and inserting equipment, postage meters and envelope address printers. To maintain high levels of customer satisfaction and innovation, Neopost regularly enriches its portfolio of solutions and services. In 2008, Neopost launched a new collection of next-generation devices.

"How a company manages its mail is highly sensitive as it is closely linked to financial matters," said Patrick Blanluet, head of the Embedded Software Research & Development Department at Neopost France. "A software defect could result in a critical business error, such as incorrectly calculated mailing costs or even postal service stoppages. As a consequence, our products must demonstrate faultless quality, which necessitates rigorous testing of our devices and embedded software."

Neopost devices include embedded software for the main device as well as peripheral items, such as digital weighing machines. The core software alone equates to more than 500,000 lines of code, the majority of which is heavily reused across products.

"Eighty percent of this core source code is common to all machines in our next-generation product line, the remaining 20% being specifically developed for each model," explained Blanluet. "This repeatable approach enables us to develop the product suite more rapidly. Because software is reused across multiple products, the quality of the code is even more crucial as a lone defect could have ramifications for our entire product portfolio and customer base. It is therefore very important to have an accurate solution for testing code during development as the code is being written."

In order to guarantee the integrity of the embedded software in its mailroom products, Neopost defined a rigorous internal testing process, including, among other aspects, the analysis of the source code in development.

"With the development of our new range of machines, we made the decision to select a development testing solution that would enable us to improve the discovery and correction of common errors that are not normally detected until the software is in a production environment," continued Blanluet. "Memory leaks or overrun of an array are just some of the defects that can impact the productivity of the development teams and the overall quality of the products. After a detailed audit and evaluation of the solutions on the market, we selected Coverity."

The continued quality improvement of Neopost's embedded software and mailroom devices enables Patrick Blanluet's team to deliver tangible and significant results, including:

• More effective identification and correction of software defects: Neopost has discovered and corrected more than 1,000 critical defects using Coverity. Its previous development testing system identified less than 500 defects.
• Greater productivity for development teams: the quality gains enabled by Coverity and Neopost's continuous improvement system have reduced the time to market by half for new versions of the software over the last two years. Instead of taking six to eight months, Neopost can now complete the development process in three or four months.

"We are developing increasingly sophisticated and complex software in response to demand from our customers. Coverity not only enables us to offer more innovative and reliable products, but also drives incremental improvements in the quality of our software. This benefits our customers and enhances the reputation of Neopost," added Blanluet. 

"Neopost has a proven track record of delivering innovation to its customers over the past 90 years," said Jennifer Johnson, Vice President of Marketing at Coverity. "As software continues to be a source of competitive advantage for the business, selecting Coverity demonstrates Neopost's commitment to product quality and customer satisfaction."

Online Resources

• Learn more about development testing
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About Coverity

Coverity, Inc., (www.coverity.com), the leader in development testing, is the trusted standard for companies that need to protect their brands and bottom lines from software failures. More than 1,100 Coverity customers use Coverity's development testing suite of products to automatically test source code for software defects that could lead to product crashes, unexpected behavior, security breaches, or catastrophic failure. Coverity is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco. Coverity is funded by Foundation Capital and Benchmark Capital. Follow us on Twitter or check out our blog.

About Neopost

Neopost is the European leader and the number two world-wide supplier of mailing solutions. It has a direct presence in 18 countries, with 5,500 employees and annual sales of euro 966 million in 2010. Its products and services are sold in more than 90 countries. It is a key player in the markets for mailroom equipment and logistics solutions. Neopost supplies the most technologically advanced solutions for franking, folding/inserting and addressing as well as logistics management and traceability. Neopost also offers a full range of services, including consultancy, maintenance and financing solutions.

Neopost is listed in the A compartment of Euronext Paris and belongs notably to the SBF 120 index.

SOURCE Coverity

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