IBM has started a three-year collaboration with the European Union, industry and academic partners, to create technology to bolster the reliability of mission-critical system upgrades by detecting and eliminating errors. Plans include sharing the results of the research project with the open source community.

Called PINCETTE - meaning 'tweezers' in French for the technology's unique 'tweezerlike' ability to flag and eliminate even the smallest software bugs across large networks - the effort aims to dramatically reduce the costs associated maintaining new system software by automating the often complicated analysis and testing processes. Estimates  put costs associated with validating new software between 40% and 70% of a system's life-cycle cost.

The consortium partners, led by IBM Research in Haifa, include: University of Oxford, UK; Universita della Svizzera Italiana (USI), Switzerland; Universita' degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca (UniMiB), Italy; Valtion Teknillinen Tutkimuskeskus (VTT), Finland; Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI), Israel; and ABB, Switzerland and Germany branches.