Archive for 2008

Cutting back this Christmas? Make mincemeat of your diverse testing challenges with TestDrive v6

Original Software enhances support for Mainframe, Oracle Forms and Java applications

December, 10, 2008 – Original Software, the software quality solution vendor, today announced the availability of the latest version of TestDrive, its visual-layer software test automation solution. This major product release sees TestDrive v6 providing full out-of-the-box automation support for even more complex architectures, adding enhanced support for Java, Oracle Forms and 3270 Mainframe applications to it’s already impressive list of supported technologies, which include .Net, Ajax, Web 2.0 and Lotus Notes.

Bola Rotibi, Principal Analyst at IT advisory firm Macehiter Ward-Dutton, commented on the announcement: “Heterogeneous application architectures and infrastructures that support a mix of core technologies such as Java, SOA, Web and Packaged application forms, create a complex environment that requires more sophisticated testing and QM facilities. Add to this the need to also test across applications that continue to reside on mainframes and you begin to understand why many organizations faced with this challenging background are forced to implement manual testing workaround strategies.” Rotibi continued: “Testing solutions that support this diversity and can automate testing right across these complex environments could potentially generate a healthy ROI and speed up time-to-market by freeing up both time and resources.”

Many business-critical packages are built in Oracle Forms, including several of Oracle’s own applications like Oracle Financials. It’s a popular tool which allows development to create user-interface applications which access an Oracle database in a very efficient and tightly-coupled way. Due to the way they combine browser and standalone Java technologies, Oracle Forms applications can create some very particular testing challenges. The advanced technology behind TestDrive meets these challenges by intelligently understanding and monitoring the application’s activity, resulting in consistent testing regardless of application performance.

Java is one of today’s most popular open application environments. Due to the modular, service-oriented nature of Java applications, they are instrumental in IT Modernization and SOA projects. This has been the motivation for significant enhancements to Java support in TestDrive v6.

Earlier this year, driven by market demand, Original Software announced support for 3270 mainframe applications in its manual testing solution, TestDrive-Assist. “The response astonished us” said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software. “Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so skeptical, because although the media focus mainly on the latest buzzwords, the fact of the matter is that many line-of-business applications on which are major corporations rely, are built over indestructible green screen technology. This stuff isn’t going out of fashion and people recognize their importance to the business, and thus the need to ensure quality. As a consequence, this new release sees us adding 3270 automation support to our repertoire as well as further improving the functionality of our IBM i5 5250 solution.”

Armitage continued: “As our recent survey* suggests, quality has become a boardroom issue and as such, rather than taking the traditional piecemeal approach, application testing is moving from a short-term project focus, to a wider strategic goal. Astute CIOs recognize that quality is imperative across all business applications and in these credit-crunch constrained times, rather than buying in new solutions for each application development or having to do manual work-arounds with their incumbent solution, that both time and money can be saved by investing in a quality solution that works across the board.”

*A recent independent CIO survey commissioned by Original Software uncovered that issues of software quality were making it to the boardroom with more than 80% of CIOs directly involved with forming SQA policies.

40% of CIOs admit corporate indifference to their own software quality

“Surely such an attitude cannot continue to exist in delivering software that is increasingly underpinning business critical applications” *

October, 7, 2008 – A study into the views of top-level executives and CIOs on software quality, announced today by Original Software, reveals corporate apathy and the failings of a multi-billion dollar industry. When asked how the importance of their software quality is perceived within the business, over 40% of CIOs admitted ‘not at all’ or ‘as a nice to have’. Not surprising then that a recent IDC survey revealed that more than 40% of all software applications are released with between one and ten critical defects, the management being fully aware of this at the time of issue.

“Such disregard is surprising given the number of high-profile horror stories the media have recently reported about poor software quality” said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software. “The launch of Terminal 5 at London Heathrow was a PR disaster due to a ‘systems fault’, a failed ERP installation into American LaFrance caused the fire-engine company to go into bankruptcy, and medical equipment killing hospital patients when a flaw in the computer code caused systems to administer heavy overdoses – to name just a few.”

The survey uncovered that issues of software quality were making it to the boardroom – not surprising given the consequences when something does go wrong – with more than 80% of CIOs directly involved with forming SQA policies. The greatest SQA challenge facing respondents was balancing cost and resource (53%). This was followed by the quality of the software and its risk to business (30%)

So if they are taking notice, why is there such apathy in the boardroom to software testing? The survey revealed that of companies who had invested in software testing solutions, only 6% were happy that it had met their objectives (the primary ones being to produce higher quality applications – 62% – and improve resource efficiency – 28%).

“Many organizations don’t spend nearly enough effort on improving the quality of the software they produce. More often than not they pay lip service to the concept whilst secretly holding the belief that it is a waste of resources (time, staff and money).” *says Bola Rotbi, Principal Analyst at research firm MWD in her article – the importance of “good enough” in software quality”

Colin Armitage agrees: “Achieving quality takes time, effort and money, and in the current credit crunch constrained times one can understand a temptation to take short cuts. There is an apathy and disregard of test automation, borne perhaps, from the limited success of solutions that came out of the last century, needing months to configure, requiring expensive and scarce specialist skills and simply collapsing in the face of rapidly changing applications. ‘Solutions’ which at best will only address 20% of the problem, only give ‘solutions’ a bad name. It is time for a rethink. CIOs cannot forego basic IT fundamentals and CEOs and shareholders cannot let them. We need cost effective technology in these cost constrained times.” he concluded.

For more information on the research which covered numerous topics including IT budgets and technology trends, please download the full whitepaper here

The survey was conducted by Richmond reports and sponsored by Original Software. The respondents were all delegates of the CIO forum in New York, their companies having average annual revenues of $5.8billion, and IT budgets of $764 million.

Original Software teams up with Euronet to keep test data secure in the financial services industry

October, 3, 2008 – Original Software, the testing solution vendor and Euronet USA Inc. the software subsidiary of leading electronic payments provider Euronet Worldwide Inc. (NASDAQ: EEFT), have teamed up to launch the Integrated Transaction Management® (ITM) Test Compliance Kit, addressing a real need to secure test data in the financial services industry.

“Testing on real data is commonplace throughout IT departments all over the globe, but nowhere are the potential security issues higher than the banking industry. Since more than 70% of all data breaches in the industry today are ‘inside jobs’, the exposure of very sensitive customer data in the testing phase (which can often be outsourced), carries with it high risk of financial loss, potential lawsuits and poor public image. Although this kind of practice is in breach of many industry regulations, scarce testing resources often force companies to cut corners,” said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software.

ITM is Euronet’s proprietary software suite of payment and transaction processing solutions. The partnership between Original and Euronet will provide a software testing solution specifically for ITM installations, allowing users to create a more manageable sub-set of data from their ITM solution and de-identify customer records and other information at risk of data breaches, for use in a testing environment.

The pre-packaged test suite contains relevant data cases and default templates to lead users by the hand through the elements of ITM they should be testing. It also facilitates de-sensitized data-sharing with Euronet and reporting and feedback of any issues that may arise, resolving issues early, enabling faster deployment of ITM and reducing the risk of errors in the live environment.

Doug Goodwin, the senior vice president of global development at Euronet USA Inc., commented on the announcement, “For many of our customers, complying with the various data privacy industry regulations proves difficult and too resource-intensive. We’ve found a solution in Original Software and have implemented it ourselves in-house, providing a good, solid return on investment. We have already invested in building modules, test scripts and data cases for ITM. Naturally, as an innovative solutions provider we like to stay ahead of the technology curve and provide our customers with easy access to the same leading edge solutions.”

The ITM Test Compliance Kit contains elements of Original Software’s leading testing solutions, including Extractor technology – to enable users to create a sub-set of the customer data in their ITM solution and de-identify customer records in line with the various data security standards and regulations, which dictate that production data should not used for testing or development. TestDrive-Assist – the Company’s manual testing support tool, which will make it easy for even non-technical professionals to conduct testing, record for compliance purposes and feedback to Euronet if they come across any issues. TestPlan – will allow them to collect, report on and organize their testing effort with pre-populated placeholders for all the elements and modules of ITM.

“Most software vendors wash their hands of quality issues when the software goes live — that’s where their involvement ends,” continues Armitage. “Euronet recognizes that this is not the end of the story for its customers who need to test the new versions of the software package with their systems before going live. This is an exemplary stance for a vendor to take to the challenging issues of software updates for its clients.”

Original Software – Having a Riot at TestExpo North and SQC this month

September, 22, 2008 – Original Software, the testing solutions vendor, is hoping to cause a stir this month at the TestExpo show in Manchester on Thursday the 25th and at the SQC Conference in London on the 29th and 30th of September.

Exhibiting on stand number one, in Manchester City Stadium for TestExpo, and on stand 16 at the SQC Conference at the QEII Conference Centre in London, the company will be giving out free ‘Anarchy’ T-shirts and spot prizes for delegates wearing the shirts at each show.

In the company’s own take on the Sex Pistols iconic 70’s album, the T-shirts, branded ‘Anarchy in the QA’ (also the title of its latest whitepaper) are designed to highlight the growing discontent amongst test teams for a solution to their woes.

George Wilson, Operations Director at Original Software, who will be giving a morning presentation at TestExpo, said: “In a recent independent survey we commissioned, 40% of CIOs admitted corporate indifference to software quality and only 6% were happy with their investment in software test automation. There is unrest brewing in IT QA departments everywhere. It stems from a frustration borne out of a lack of recognition within their own organization of the importance of software quality, the potential competitive advantage their company could enjoy if they get it right, and the major negative impact that can result from poor software quality processes. On top of this, there are too many in-effectual ‘solutions’ which have failed to deliver”.

Data Scrambling leaves CIOs without egg on their face

Original Software addresses data security issues in TestBench for Oracle v6.3

August, 5, 2008 – Original Software, the testing solution vendor, today announced the release of the latest version of TestBench for Oracle which includes an intelligent data scrambling module, protecting companies from data exposure and satisfying audit and compliance requirements, as well as safeguarding the individuals or companies referenced in the data.

Common sense and good practice say that exposing traceable production data to test disciplines is risky. Despite legal requirements and in some cases severe penalties for breaking them, testing on live data still tends to be common practice. One survey showed 62 percent of companies were using live customer data to test applications and 49 percent shared this data with outsourced testers, with no way of knowing if it was ever compromised*.

Production data as a source of background data is valuable and desirable for testing and allows the test environment to represent the live system as closely as possible. A recent report from analyst group Freeform Dynamics – ‘Data Governance in the Software Lifecycle’ – highlights the need for improvements in automation in areas such as test data management, and live data sanitation in the testing process.

Using the new data scrambling module within TestBench for Oracle, real data can be used that accurately reflects the live environment, but has been made anonymous, neutralising the risk of testing on live data by no longer exposing real customer details and high security risk items to the live testing process.

TestBench can transform this data in two ways:

• By using existing data – Real records are used but the data fields are randomly scrambled between rows, de-identifying customer records for example. Developers may choose to keep some related fields together – for example lines 1, 2, and 3 of the address, for address validation purposes – and just mix up the other details.
• By generating new data – recommended for when data is so sensitive (for example, credit card numbers and bank details) that just mixing the field with a different customer name is not sufficient. Developers have three options – to randomly generate, to generate numbers with a sequential start value, or they have the option to write their own program to generate data and plug it straight in. To maintain database integrity, the module will intelligently change these details everywhere they appear – for example in order files, within the customer records database and in all invoices.

Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software said: “The scrambling module completes our Oracle data management capabilities. Customers can already extract data from live systems to a test environment and the testing functionality enables them to view the effects of the application under test on the database. They can then build rules to validate database effects for all future tests. Our data protection module allows users to roll back the changes and reset the environment if it becomes corrupted by any testing activity, and now we can also ensure that the data being used, is not only risk-free but is still representative of the live environment.”

All of the TestBench for Oracle functionality including data scrambling is available on 9i, 10g and 11i versions.

* The Insecurity of Test Data: The Unseen Crisis, – a Compuware / Ponemon Institute study

New Portal from Original Software enables better test-team collaboration

August, 5, 2008 – Original Software, the testing solution vendor, today announced the launch of Original Software Manager, a brand new test-asset management portal, providing a single point of entry to the complete Original Software product set.

Using a simple file structure within Windows Explorer, workspaces can be stored locally or put on the network to share between test teams. It allows better organisation of all the assets involved on test projects, from automation, workflow and manual testing tools, to test plans, scripts and action maps, as well as supporting documents and spread sheets. In fact, any kind of item or application can be dragged into these workspace folders, facilitating knowledge sharing and collaboration within the test team.

Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software said: “The new portal allows testing and QA professionals to manage licences and more easily deal with complex environments where multiple servers and testing solutions may be deployed. With a user friendly interface, it is anticipated that significant time savings will be found in locating files, launching products and utilising assets that may already exist within the team.”

Original Software Manager is shipped as a free add-on with all new product purchases or requested as a CD by existing customers.

TestBench for iSeries v6.3 increases test coverage and saves hours of testing time

August, 5, 2008 – Original Software, the testing solution vendor, today announced the availability of TestBench for iSeries 6.3.

Customer demand has driven the latest enhancements to TestBench for iSeries which is spearheaded by a new report compare facility, reducing the risk of undetected errors and allowing testers to accurately and quickly identify faults within reports.

“Report Compare is an invaluable asset for our test team” said Dale Cook, Manager of Software Development at customer Euronet. “A typical regression test on our applications would produce hundreds of reports. It just wasn’t feasible to manually check through all of these. Subsequently when an error was picked up, it took huge amounts of research time to run through the reports trying to figure out why it was wrong. The worst case scenario though, would be the financial implications of something we didn’t catch going out the door. It really was an unacceptable level of risk that we were at pains to minimise. Nothing on the market sufficiently met our needs. Report Compare will reduce corporate risk and allow us to improve the quality of our applications” he concluded.

Report compare enables testers to compare a new version of a report against a previously validated baseline version, ensuring that when a program change is made, they can instantly tell if there has been any adverse impact to the report. It will identify key pieces of information, for example invoice numbers or product codes, then do an intelligent comparison of two report runs, identifying additional line items and correctly matching up those that exist in both reports.

Test tools have long struggled with anomalies in test reports. For example, if you had two reports, line one would have been compared with line one and so on, any error or additional line item would have thrown it all off-kilter. If this happened right at the beginning, the whole report was useless. If your first error appeared on page 999, you may have lost interest after the first 50 pages and assumed it was working correctly. Now, in an industry first, report compare allows testers to identify changes straight away and trap errors they wouldn’t have otherwise picked up -a huge potential risk if sending out invoices to customers with wrong invoice values.

Reliance IT team reduces testing bottleneck by 80% and wins back business confidence

June, 26, 2008 – Reliance Security Services, an established market leader in the provision of manpower and electronic security solutions, has utilized Original Software’s end-to-end testing solution to enable its IT team to respond to the increasing demands of the business, re-build confidence in IT and deliver projects on time and on budget.

Since implementation, Reliance has seen the productivity of its programmers increase by 20%, and general test cycles reduce by 80%, whilst enabling a greater breadth of testing, reducing errors and improving user confidence in IT. It has also reduced the cost of back-filling user testing resources.

Tim Aitkinson, CIO of Reliance Security Services agrees: “The IT and business are now more closely aligned and working as a partnership to drive the business forward. The Original Software team are very approachable, understand our needs and are knowledgeable about how to get the most out of an improved test process – it has been a good partnership.”

Confidence in IT had been at a low within the company following a lengthy project to re-engineer large parts of its bespoke system. “We had a business critical development with a hard deadline. It was a large project with a lot of manual testing. The testing was a painful experience lasting over a year” said Chris Thompson, System Development Manager. The experience had made business users cautious about how IT could assist them in future challenges, Thompson explained: “We found that even small fixes were a big effort, so how could we improve the delay in software changes and win back the confidence of the business whenever we had to change a system?”

In order to respond to business needs, the Reliance IT team wanted a solution that would help them improve the quality and speed of application changes. Chris Thompson said: “We knew that we needed better change control and more efficient testing. We already knew Original Software as we’d had previous success with their TestBench solution. They clearly had the technology lead.” Reliance chose to implement TestDrive and TestPlan to sit alongside TestBench and create an end-to-end solution, to bring business critical projects in, on time and on budget.

TestPlan immediately freed up one day per month of Thompson’s already stretched schedule and is proving fundamental in co-ordinating all the testing activities and managing the handovers from development, to system test, to acceptance test. As different people are involved at each stage of the project, one group is easily able to review the tasks and results conducted by another group and can re-use test scripts.

Thompson’s strategy has been to address as many areas of testing as possible. By implementing the Original Software solution, he is now able to test over the entire Application Development Lifecycle from Unit Testing to User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and everything in between, at the database level as well as the visual layer. TestBench has been deployed in the development team allowing database effects to be isolated and checked, thus speeding up the programmer’s analysis of whether their program is working correctly or not. This has increased the programmer’s productivity by 20%, whilst also improving the quality deliverable.

The system functionality is now tested to a greater depth before being handed over to UAT, reducing the number of errors detected, speeding up the delivery of the modifications and improving user confidence in IT. This process enables the projects to be delivered on schedule and makes better use of the testers’ time. “Use of TestBench and TestDrive for System Testing helped to relieve a key bottleneck that had added months of delays to system improvements in the past within Reliance. It also reduced the cost of back-filling user testing resources,” said Thompson.

A key benefit was that the technology does not rely on code-driven scripts and so can be adopted for user testing. This was important for Reliance as UAT was a key part of the delivery strategy. Using TestBench and TestDrive-Gold, Reliance found that a test cycle which previously took one to two days for environment set up and data population, and five days to complete a full cycle (which was repeated 3 times), would now take only one day per test cycle, saving them 80% on time spent testing.

Thompson said: “This could not have been possible without the Original Software suite. The whole process is condensed into a manageable timeframe. I think the fact that non-IT people have been able to use the solution is extremely beneficial.”

Original Software sees rising demand to protect mission-critical applications

CIO prayers are answered with the first manual testing solution to support the IBM Mainframe

May, 7, 2008 – Original Software, the automated software testing vendor, today announced the availability of an upgrade for its popular manual testing solution, TestDrive-Assist. Due to increasing pressure on CIOs to reduce risk on mission-critical applications, Original Software has experienced considerable demand to extend its support to the IBM mainframe.

TestDrive-Assist is designed to help business analysts, QA teams and user-acceptance testers in detecting and reproducing errors, sharing knowledge, and producing audit-quality diagnostics and reporting. With less than a ten minute learning curve, users are up-and-running instantly and workload can be reduced by over a third.

“Since its initial launch TestDrive-Assist has supported modern web and client server interfaces but we have been surprised at the level of demand for also testing legacy mainframe applications. Whilst the rate of development on legacy applications has dropped in favour of web interfaces, many of the worlds most critical applications are still based on legacy systems and any changes which cannot be properly tested represent an unacceptable level of risk to today’s CIO.” said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software.

The latest version of TestDrive-Assist extends its support to cover 3270 applications, the emulation used on IBM mainframes, otherwise known as the zSeries. A single solution can now be used for assisting with manual testing of Windows and Web applications as well as legacy iSeries and Mainframe green screens. There is full support for the mainframe including screen and input capture, performance statistics, spell-checking, test status audit tracking, test plan import, results storage and reporting.

Original Software will be exhibiting at Star East in Orlando this week, on booth 51, where they will be promoting the latest version of Test Drive-Assist and the launch of ManualTesting.com, a community site with a wealth of free downloadable resources designed to aid users involved with manual testing.

Existing TestDrive-Assist customers on a current maintenance contract will receive this upgrade free-of-charge. It can be downloaded from Original Software’s customer site. Trials of the mainframe enabled product can be requested from solutions@origsoft.com.

Original Software hands out an aspirin for CIOs

Knowledge center helps with headaches caused by testing in the development cycle

April, 3, 2008 – Original Software, a leader in next-generation software test automation, today announced the launch of ManualTesting.com and the latest version of TestDrive-Assist, a testing tool which can help speed up application delivery by over a third. With testing typically taking up to 40 percent of the overall development, ManualTesting.com serves as a knowledge center for CIOs to ease the increasing pressure placed upon them to rapidly develop high quality business applications. The resources available will assist CIOs and IT Managers in accelerating time-to-market on new projects, reducing risk, improving efficiency and slashing the overheads involved on new developments.

Testing is almost always perceived as the main bottleneck in any application delivery timeline, and many CIOs are asking themselves just why it takes so long – on average up to 40 percent of the project lifecycle. It is a heavily manual and laborious process for the QA teams and business users involved in acceptance testing, who always seem to need more time. With increasing pressure to speed up delivery, CIOs are beginning to question if the business can tackle the issue of manual testing in a different way other than the traditional response of throwing more resources at it.

Software test automation has often been touted as a savior, according to IDC, spend on automation is over $1,000,000,000, and is destined to keep on growing, but in contrast to the huge spending trends, Original Software’s own research has shown that these investments are only being applied to less than 20 percent of the overall testing cycle, if at all, and is often proving in-effective for most departments.

Original’s solution, TestDrive-Assist, is designed to help business analysts, QA teams and user-acceptance testers in detecting and reproducing errors, sharing knowledge, and producing audit-quality diagnostics and reporting. With less than a ten minute learning curve, users are up-and-running instantly and workload is reduced by over a third.

“By using TestDrive-Assist to streamline process of manual testing, you could typically cut a two month test cycle by three weeks” said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software. “The team’s testing work is captured as they go, improving their efficiency and providing a comprehensive audit trail in line with regulatory compliance and quality requirements. Most CIOs are unaware of just how much manual testing is costing their company. The ROI calculator on manualtesting.com puts this in sharp perspective and illustrates how these figures can by cut by over a third, reducing overheads and significantly speeding up application delivery” Armitage concluded. Along with the ROI calculator, the website provides a trial download of TestDrive-Assist, access to analyst’s market reports, free whitepapers, e-seminars and competitive comparisons.