OCS: Company

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OC Systems provides software instrumentation tools and consulting services that help organizations gain greater visibility into large, complex applications.

The larger and more complex an application is, the more difficult it is to find out what is happening inside, as the application executes.

There are many tools that provide visibility into an application's execution during development, but once the application reaches integration and system test, those tools are too invasive.

OC Systems offers tools and services to provide that visibility in the post-development environment. With these solutions, defects and performance problems that are not discovered until integration can be resolved faster, reducing the risk of slipping the schedule.

Once the application is deployed, defects that are found in the field can be debugged remotely and resolved faster. This reduces downtime, lowers the cost of supporting the application and improves customer satisfaction.

Technology

Most of OC Systems products and services are based on Aprobe, a patented software instrumentation technology that lets you monitor the execution of a software application, log data, or alter its behavior.

Aprobe is an agent-based system that is much less intrusive than other agent-based tools. Agents, called probes, are introduced at the machine-code level while the application is in memory. No changes are made to any application files stored on disk, making it easy to insert, modify and remove the probes.

Unlike most agents, which simply monitor the execution, probes can read parameters and collect other data about the internal functioning of the application. Probes can also change the execution of the program as it is running, which can be used to simulate faults or test fixes.

Clients

Clients include U.S. Customs & Border Protection, Lockheed Martin, IBM, Northrop Grumman, SAS, Raytheon, ITT Corp, FAA, FBI and the U.S. Army.

History

  • Founded in 1983, OC Systems originally developed compilers and other custom solutions for its clients.
  • In the mid-1990s, it evolved into a products company, first offering an integrated Ada development environment called PowerAda and then introducing Aprobe, its powerful software instrumentation technology.
  • In 2001, the company launched RootCause, an application management tool used to track down performance bottlenecks, memory leaks and other problems in deployed applications.
  • In 2004, OC Systems used the Aprobe instrumentation technology as the foundation for the Universal Agent, a framework for integrating any software application with Unicenter NSM.
  • In 2005, OC Systems joined the Eclipse Foundation and began to participate actively in the Test and Performance Tools Project.
  • In 2006, Wind River and OC Systems partnered to deliver dynamic instrumentation services to the embedded market.
  • In 2007, RootCause Transaction Instrumentation was introduced. RTI provides a way to measure end-user response time at the browser.

Ownership

OC Systems is a privately held company that is owned by its employees.