Archive for 2012

Oracle Users Liberated From ERP Upgrade Nightmares

Original Software showcases a Faster, Easier, Safer approach to Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades at the OAUG COLLABORATE 12 show

Apr 17, 2012, – Original Software, the leading Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, today announced an innovative four-pronged approach to help Oracle users reduce the pain of implementing ERP upgrades while reducing the associated risks. The impact of these ERP upgrades is often huge, while Original Software’s goal is to transform them into an “Easy Repeatable Process”.

“Each of these four elements are essential to transform the upgrade landscape”, commented Colin Armitage, CEO at Original Software, “and it is their cohesive integration that is the key.”

The first element is an AQM system that provides the essential communication, collaboration and controls for each project. The second element is impact analysis so the extent of the upgrade can be rapidly understood, planned and the appropriate resources allocated. The third element empowers manual testers to reduce the impact of this painful activity, supported by an easy migration to test automation to further reduce the workload in the future. The final element are sets of pre-built test cases covering the key modules of Oracle E-Business Suite, which have been developed in conjunction with TruTek, a national provider of Oracle training and Oracle consulting services.

At COLLABORATE 12, Original Software in partnership with TruTek, will be hosting a series of presentation topics on Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades, throughout Monday, 23rd and Tuesday 24th, which will be held in the Vista Suite.

John Miner, Original Software Operations Director, Americas, will be presenting a conference session in the Suite, on the subject of application quality management that explores a strategy for testing Oracle upgrades and offers best practice. The presentation: “Mission Impossible? A Strategy for Testing Your Upgrade to R12”, will be held at midday on Tuesday 24th.

“The Oracle E-Business Suite community faces multiple challenges as they move from Release 11i to 12.x and potentially beyond to Fusion,” says Miner. “Original Software’s intuitive solution is designed for business analysts, IT and end users that directly tackles Oracle E-Business Suite application quality issues by ensuring that the implementation or upgrade delivers the business results the company would expect.”

COLLABORATE 12 is a Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community organised by the Oracle Application User Group, (OAUG), and helps users of the full family of Oracle business applications and database software gain greater value from their Oracle investments. It takes place on Sunday, April 22nd through to Thursday, April 26th at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The event brings together three major independent users groups, IOUG, OAUG and Quest, to offer in-depth education and networking opportunities, which will bring an expected 5,000 plus attendees.

Original Software will be showcasing their application quality management solution every hour on booth 1746, where users of not only Oracle E-Business Suite, but also, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft technology, will be able to discover an “Easy Repeatable Process” ensuring a faster, easier and safer upgrade process.

For more information about Original Software’s unique approach to Oracle upgrade quality management, please visit: http://www.origsoft.com/solutions/oracle-software-testing/

Original Software and TruTek Announce Partnership to Provide R12 Upgrade Lifeline to Oracle E-Business Suite Customers

Joint solution will lower the costs for and reduce the risks of upgrading to Oracle EBS R12

7 March 2012, – Original Software, a leading Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, today announced an innovative partnership with TruTek, a consulting/training organization specializing in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) of applications. For the first time, Oracle customers challenged by EBS upgrades can take advantage of a complete solution combining TruTek’s Fast Start Test Packs and services with Original Software’s AQM solution.

The partnership will deliver comprehensive planning, execution and management of all Quality Assurance activities for Oracle products. Mike Swing, CEO at TruTek adds: “We have a wealth of experience in the Oracle EBS environment and have built up valuable test assets and knowledge to make upgrades less painful. The Original Software solution enables us to deliver this knowledge to clients in a reusable form with our Fast Start Test Packs, and the ease of automation means we can help clients get quick wins.”

The Oracle EBS community faces multiple challenges as they move from Release 11i to 12.x and potentially beyond to Fusion. This workload is over-laid by the regular and time consuming effort involved with applying and testing patches for the Oracle E-Business Suite. The clock is running because, as Oracle offers extended support until November 2013, they have made it clear that upgrading to R12.x is an essential step to maintain support and enable further upgrades.

“Our customers are telling us that the amount of effort required to upgrade to EBS Release 12.x is a substantial increase compared to previous upgrades. It is time-consuming and costly,” says Colin Armitage, CEO at Original Software. “A large part of the work is in the testing and validation phases, which is likely to need to be repeated anywhere from five to ten times during the upgrade process. Once the upgrade is complete, the need for testing doesn’t go away – customers need a solution that they can use over and over as new versions are released by Oracle.”

Original Software’s code-free approach is especially suitable for this challenge because it was designed with End Users and Business Analysts in mind to avoid the need for specialist skills like those required for Oracle’s own offering, OATS, and other similar tools. Mike Swing adds: “The code-free nature and user friendliness of the Original Software solution suite was an important factor in our choice to partner with the company. I’ve not come across such a perfect fit for Oracle EBS testing in my 20 years of experience working in the Oracle space!”

Together, Original Software and TruTek will help Oracle E-Business Suite users build an effective “application quality eco-system” for the Oracle E-Business Suite. “TruTek’s expertise in Oracle, together with our capabilities in software quality, will support customer requirements to lower the operational costs for upgrading Oracle EBS Suite Release 12 and the ongoing Application Quality Management requirements of Oracle EBS customers,” concludes Armitage.

###

About TruTek: (www.trutek.com)

TruTek is a national provider of Oracle training and Oracle consulting services, specializing in the E-Business Suite and the Oracle Database. Founded in 1991, TruTek offers Oracle database and E-Business Suite consulting, training and remote services, supporting Financials, HR Payroll, Supply Chain and Procurement. TruTek has also carried out many implementations and upgrades from Release 11i to Release 12. TruTek has a robust R12.1 Upgrade methodology and offers technical R12.1 upgrade training for the DBAs and the R12.1 New Features for Financials for functional analysts.

About Original Software: (www.origsoft.com)

With a world class record of innovation, Original Software offers a solution focused completely on the goal of effective quality management. By embracing the full spectrum of Application Quality Management across a wide range of applications and environments, the company partners with customers and helps make quality a business imperative. Solutions include a quality management platform, manual testing, full test automation and test data management, all delivered with the control of business risk, cost, time and resources in mind.

More than 400 organizations operating in over 30 countries use Original Software solutions. Current users range from major multi-nationals to small software development shops, encompassing a wide range of industries, sectors and sizes. We are proud of our partnerships with the likes of Coca-Cola, Cargill, HSBC, FedEx, Pfizer, DHL and many others.

Press contact

Maria Martin
Original Software
+44 1256 338 666
press@origsoft.com

Sherri Dudley
Sales Director
801-486-6655
sherri@trutek.com

Affymetrix Chooses Original Software to Support its Centre of Excellence for Software Testing

Microarray technology firm claims TestDrive as the only software testing solution to support its heterogeneous mix of business applications

Feb 2, 2012, – Original Software, a leading Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, today announced that it has signed an agreement with Affymetrix, Inc. (NASDAQ:AFFX), to support a strategy of building an AQM Centre of Excellence for the provider of genome-wide analysis tools. Original Software’s solution suite has been selected because of its ease of use and ability to support the FLEX technology that is used within Affymetrix’s hosted HR application.

Researchers around the world use Affymetrix technologies to better understand the role that genes play in disease, the effectiveness and safety of therapies, and many other biological factors that affect human well-being. As a company whose mission is to revolutionize how the world benefits from genetic information, Affymetrix took a similar approach in choosing its software testing partner.

“We deliver a number of business services to our research customers and internal lines of business, and we wanted to build an AQM Centre of Excellence that would ensure that the quality of these services was secured with one solution across all the business applications that we offer, said Mike Vedda, CIO at Affymetrix. “Time to market is key in maintaining our competitive edge, and I didn’t want the team having to get to grips with multiple tools for all the different applications we have.”

Padmaja Surapaneni is the Director of IT at Affymetrix and is responsible for managing the QA processes and best practices for the various IT application groups. “We have four core business applications, the most important of which is our customer facing eCommerce application. Our Human Resources application is a hosted service built using the Adobe Flex framework. With weekly updates and non-technical users in HR carrying out the testing, it was important that the software we chose not only supported this new technology, but was also very easy to use. Original Software fit both requirements with its code-free approach to testing and support for Flex,” said Surapaneni.

Maintaining compliance with FDA Quality System requirements is business-critical to Affymetrix and was an important factor in selecting a software testing solution. Quality documentation is produced and managed within its content management application, SharePoint. Surapaneni explained: “All our Quality documents are stored in SharePoint, and any changes to our content management application have to be thoroughly tested. I was particularly impressed with how Original Software was able to execute PDF comparisons as part of the test to ensure that our compliance audit documentation was not corrupted.”

“The other vendors just failed to meet the technical requirements of creating and executing test cases over the various application technologies under test. The solution from Original Software was by far the most flexible and easy to use,” added Surapaneni.

Implementation started in August 2011, and Affymetrix is using Qualify, a complete Application Quality Management (AQM) solution, to help unite all aspects of the software quality lifecycle and provide an integrated approach to the company’s quality process across its different business applications.

Affymetrix is also implementing TestDrive-Assist and TestDrive, which are fully integrated solutions that allow it to manage the journey to automation in a seamless and painless manner. TestDrive-Assist, discreetly captures tests while they are performed, including what is happening within the application. It also provides an audit trail and clear information for reproducing bugs. Its ability to automatically migrate these tests to an automated test script in TestDrive is a unique and powerful enabler for Affymetrix who wants to move to automation quickly and easily.

Vedda concludes: “I’m certain that our time to market will be improved as a result of using the Original Software’s solution suite. We’ve calculated an ROI of 18 months to be prudent, but I’m convinced that we will get a far quicker return due to the ease of use and speed at which testing will be carried out.”

About Affymetrix: (www.affymetrix.com)

Affymetrix technology is used by the world’s top pharmaceutical, diagnostic, and biotechnology companies, as well as leading academic, government and non-profit research institutes. More than 2,000 systems have been shipped around the world and more than 23,000 peer-reviewed papers have been published using the technology. Affymetrix is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., and has manufacturing facilities in Santa Clara, Cleveland, Ohio, and Singapore. The company has about 900 employees worldwide and maintains sales and distribution operations across Europe, Asia, and Latin America.