In an ever more competitive and technical world, computer systems are
an essential component of the commercial success of many businesses.
More than ever before, these increasingly complex computer systems
must satisfy business needs, be reliable and be readily adaptable to
evolving demands.

Developers of such computer software must deliver high quality
products that meet customers' requirements, on time and on budget. To
achieve these goals is a challenging task, made more difficult by the
ever greater demands for seamless integration and ongoing maintenance
of software modules.

The complexity of computer systems can be controlled by formalising
and automating the software development process.

The last ten years has seen the introduction of many tools and methods
to assist developers, using more structured and automated techniques.
These Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools have improved
the production of software, but they do not address the entirety of
the software development cycle. Although Fourth Generation Languages
and Object Oriented Programming lead to quality improvements, they do
not stop large systems being difficult to specify, develop and
maintain, causing them to be delivered late and over budget.

Many of the problems arise because complete, precise and concise
specifications for a computer application and all its sub-components
are difficult to achieve and therefore difficult to validate
convincingly against requirements. It has often also proved impossible
to meet the goal of making them independent of the hardware and
software environments in which they operate and hence it has been
difficult to take advantage of improvements in hardware technology.

When precise specifications can be validated against user
requirements, they provide an independent basis for systematic, and
even automatic, production of software for different operating
environments. The resulting programs require much less testing and
maintenance with total life-cycle costs reduced.

Now, such results can be achieved. B-Core's B-Method and its
supporting set of tools, the B-Toolkit, have been developed in
collaboration with BP International and Oxford University during an
eight year programme to industrialise the results that have emerged
from research into Formal Methods for software development.