Original Software hosts software testing conference
OSG’s second annual international symposium was the best place to glean technical knowledge of automated software testing tools.
September, 29, 2005 – Software test automation experts at The Original Software Group, Ltd. held their fifth annual International Software Testing Conference last week. All technical workshops and informational sessions during this one and one-half day event were widely attended by OSG clients, some of whom ahd made the trip from Europe. Guest speakers from Capital One and Costco made presentations on how automated testing technology is used in real-world scenarios and how much it has reduced the cost of development. Several product enhancements and marketing changes were also discussed.
This year’s event was held September 27 and 28, at the award winning Marriott Oakbrook Hills Resort in Oakbrook, Illinois, 22 miles west of downtown Chicago. 100-plus attendees were the first to see the company’s polished new corporate image and completely reworked website. Says Gus Kenyon, OSG’s Director of Marketing, “Our new image should be easier to remember as we reach out to a broader market. TestBench for iSeries has demonstrated its usefulness in helping IT shops reduce software defects and conserve resources in the process. It has also proven effective in helping organizations meet new requirements for corporate reporting and privacy. TestGUI and TestWEB extend similar benefits to a wider market.”
In the past three years, compliance with legislation that governs the accountability of publicly and privately held organizations, and the importance of protecting sensitive data has received lots of attention. At this year’s conference, experts from OSG explained how testing tools can simplify the process of ensuring that calculations performed by applications are correct and certifiable, and demonstrate under SOX, HIPAA, and FDA guidelines how testing has taken place if the need to do so becomes necessary. Restricting third party access to data was also addressed along with protecting production data that is used for testing.
New versions of TestGUI and TestPLAN were also announced at last week’s conference. TestGUI is now in general release 4.0. Self-healing script technology; accessibility to mainstream development environments like Lotus Notes and Microsoft Access, new view options, and many other features have been added. TestPLAN, now in version 2.2 is web enabled and can accommodate users on multiple Wintel based servers. Other new features have also been added to TestPLAN.
2005 has been the best year in OSG’s history from a revenue perspective. OSG has expanded direct and indirect sales channels to accommodate increased demand for its products and expanded product development and support operations. The segment of software development tools that addresses test automation is thriving according to Framingham, Mass. researcher IDC. It reports that demand for Automated Software Quality tools grew by double-digits in 2004. The need for improved software development productivity, higher software quality, and reduced time to market, along with the need to manage increasingly complex software, and the business-criticality of software are some of the reasons this growth, says IDC.
Since 1997 OSG has built a rock solid reputation with its wide range of automated software testing tools and services that support application development teams throughout the life of an application. TestBENCH for iSeries is OSG’s most widely used product. Many flagship TestBENCH clients also use TestDRIVE, a client server extension to TestBENCH; Extractor for iSeries, a tool that helps create test data packs; and solutions for other platforms like TestWEB, and TestGUI.
