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.”
