19 December 2011 – An IT adaptation of a popular children’s Christmas story has sparked much interest within the software testing community today. The famous story by author Dr. Seuss*; “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”, was given a modern IT revamp by leading Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, Original Software, in a bid to highlight the way many businesses are forced to gamble with software quality.

According to Original Software, the difficulty of executing effective software testing has left businesses significantly exposed to the risk of gambling with their software quality. Taking risk is a necessary evil in order to obtain competitive advantage, especially in today’s economic climate. However, unmanaged risks in software development can have disastrous consequences. Application failures can lead to a loss of external and internal confidence, cause damage to brands and ultimately have a negative effect on revenue streams.

Borrowing the theme of the Grinch, Original Software offers pragmatic advice on achieving software quality, whilst illustrating the negative impact that current testing tools have had in the application quality lifecycle. Publishing this advice in the form of an “Original Insight”, the paper tells the story of the Grinch with a modern technological twist.

The newly entitled story: “A Tester’s Winter Tale – “How the Grinch Stole Scripting!” is aimed primarily at QA Management and focuses on software test automation. The opinion piece explains how removing the burden of code-based scripting, makes automation more widely achievable even by subject matter experts, and not limited to just developers and testers. The impact on IT development teams is reduced and in short, quality can become less of a risk.

“Original Software offers a solution that is not code-driven and requires no programming skills by users. This empowers all users to define and execute their tests without the need to use any kind of code,” says Colin Armitage, CEO at Original Software. “The application quality management process becomes even more efficient, enabling businesses to increase their test coverage during the delivery of business critical projects. This latest Original Insight was welcomed by the testing community during last week’s Special Interest Group on Testing, which took place in London. Not only does it communicate the benefits of using code-free automation, it also adds a little seasonal fun to the subject in the lead up to the holiday period,” adds Armitage.

“A Tester’s Winter Tale – “How the Grinch Stole Scripting!” is available for download at: http://www.origsoft.com/grinch.

* Originally from the children’s story by author Dr. Seuss, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”

Press contact
Tulin Pledger
Head of Marketing
+44 1256 338 689
tpledger@origsoft.com

15th December 2011, – In its annual round up and planning for the year ahead, Original Software, a leading Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, renowned for its innovative technology, reveals how it continues to break the mould in application quality, by driving down the cost and risk of software delivery projects. Several customer examples confirm how the software vendor has helped deliver a proven ROI in months rather than years.

Coca-Cola, a global leader in the beverage industry, often reluctant to comment on the IT suppliers it uses, needed a solution which would enable them to build rapid and maintainable automation. It found this unique combination with Original Software and in a partnership which has continued for over 8 years. Gerald Weichselbraun, Quality Manager, at Coca-Cola Computer Services said: “The Original Software solution enabled the QA team to create a wide range of automated tests and help maintain the high quality of the BASIS application used by many bottling plants around the world. Around 130 Test Cases with about 3000 Scripts comparing 200,000 individual screens have been recorded over time and are readily available to run business process related tests in a short time. It has saved the team many hundreds of man-hours and means that BASIS can be assured to a level just not possible manually, supporting Coca-Cola’s mission of delivering quality to their business partners in a timely manner.”

RSC Equipment Rental serves as a vital and trusted partner for thousands of customers in construction, industrial, petrochemical, governmental, and manufacturing businesses across the United States and Canada. With Original Software, RSC is now automating over 30% of its test cases and executing its regression tests almost 3 times faster. Cynthia Pangan, QA and Change Management said: “It used to take approximately 10-15 users and 2-3 days for each to test each release. With TestDrive, we are now able to accomplish this with 1 user in 1 day. We have gone from a product release cycle of once a quarter to once a week. If we did not have TestDrive, there is no way we could get all that testing done manually within a week.”

The testing market place is crowded with smaller, niche, code-driven open source testing vendors and a handful of large multi-nationals, with the ability to charge enormous amounts for maintenance renewals. Original Software reports that it is bucking the conventional tester wisdom that says it’s difficult for business to achieve quality with a trusted partner.

NYSE Euronext is a leading global operator of financial markets and provider of innovative trading technologies. Paul Cassell, Vice President of QA, said: “In terms of the perfect vendor, I’d much rather have a small contact group. It makes me feel really comfortable working with Original Software – they can answer both the business and technical questions that I might throw at them without having to go through ten people.”

Taking risk is a necessary evil in order to obtain competitive advantage, especially in today’s economic climate. However, unmanaged risks in software development can have disastrous consequences. Application failures can lead to a loss of external and internal confidence, cause damage to brands and ultimately have a negative effect on revenue streams. One of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world turned to Original Software to help combat the risks associated with its fast adoption of new applications and technologies. “The solution from Original Software has helped us to significantly reduce the business risk of poor quality. Prior to using TestDrive, we didn’t have the time or resource during each release cycle to test over 200 mortgage application scenarios – the testing simply wasn’t being carried out. Now with Original Software’s help, it takes us just 4 hours to run test cycles, and that’s a massive improvement on not doing any!”

Quality needs to be addressed at all layers of the business application. The Original Software solution suite enables users to check every element of the application – from the visual layer, through the underlying service processes and messages, as well as into the database. Original Software offers a solution that is code-free and requires no programming skills by the users. This philosophy empowers all users to define and execute their tests without the need to use any kind of code and is particularly useful when business users carry out User Acceptance Testing of business-critical ERP applications such as Oracle or SAP.

Craig Armstrong, IT Project Manager at Wales & West Utilities was quoted as saying at the start of 2011: “Our testing process has to be as seamless and pain free as possible, so integration of the tools was another key factor in our decision making. We were extremely impressed with the level at which Original Software’s solution suite was integrated. This will enhance the user experience and provide an end-to-end solution for our application quality strategy. Our business resources are called upon to complete User Acceptance Testing as and when required. Since testing isn’t their primary role within the organisation, we needed a solution that offered our users an intuitive experience. We reviewed all the leading vendors in the market place, including HP, for a solution that would help ease the burden of our applications testing. The Original Software suite of testing solutions ticked the “ease of use” box like no other application suite we reviewed within the testing application market.”

Qualify is a complete Application Quality Management (AQM) solution, uniting all aspects of the software quality lifecycle from requirements through to deployment. It provides an integrated approach to solving a company’s quality process and management challenges.

TestDrive-Assist and TestDrive are fully integrated solutions that allow companies 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 customers wanting to move to automation quickly and easily.

Original Software can also manage the test data environment with TestBench. The solution addresses the validation of database effects during a test. TestBench ensures that for any test, whether manual or automated, the database effects form part of the results of the test execution. It also helps with compliance, as the need for data privacy extends beyond production systems to test data as well.

“It’s great to hear these success stories across a range of industries, applications and technologies,” concluded Colin Armitage, CEO at Original Software. “What is really interesting is how each of our clients view the benefits they have gained in different ways. For RSC it has enabled them to remove a road block from their development process and speed up their time to market. While our banking client has been able to achieve a depth and breadth of coverage that is impossible to achieve through manual testing alone.”

15 November 2011 – Original Software, a leading Application Quality Management, (AQM) vendor, announced today that Qualify, its solution for managing the quality lifecycle of any application, has added Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010, to the list of 3rd party point solutions that it works with. TFS is a Microsoft tool used to support Visual Studio .Net developments. Qualify already integrates with defect tracking tools, such as Bugzilla and JIRA, as well as the open development platform, Eclipse.

“The majority of our customers operate in a cross-platform environment and we are often being asked to integrate with the other tools that they already have in place,” says Colin Armitage, CEO at Original Software. “Microsoft has delivered a strong solution for use in development work tasks, code creation and source control, but TFS is simply unable to scale beyond small development teams into a multi-project, multi-platform, resource management centre like Qualify can.”

Qualify brings effective Quality Management right into the heart of the software delivery process. The solution unites all aspects of the software delivery lifecycle from requirements through to release. It is also fully integrated with Original Software’s manual and automated test execution solutions for the user interface and database layers. Qualify encompasses requirements, planning, scheduling, resource management, test execution, defect management and reporting in one platform, ensuring collaboration and communication between and within various teams and projects. The methodology agnostic and entirely code free solution, which is also great for an agile environment, also comes complete with a smart phone interface, allowing instant access to cross-project information from just about anywhere.

The solution sits above TFS, offering a single collaboration and management platform. Users can view all aspects of their multi-project, multi-team and cross-platform development streams. Where there is a .Net development infrastructure, users can see a totally integrated view of their TFS work items and status, update them in place and expose the information to all interested parties.

Armitage concludes: “All our solutions are code-free and easy to use and we are finding that customers are embracing this code-free approach in order to empower their QA teams, rather than add additional maintenance burdens, via coded methods, to an already stretched software delivery team.”

The Qualify module for TFS is available now. More information about the solution can be found here.

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 companies 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
Tulin Pledger
Head of Marketing
+44 1256 338 689

15th August 2011, – Original Software, a leading vendor in Application Quality Management (AQM) and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) solutions, today announced its participation in the RS500 World Championships 2011 sailing event which will be hosted by the 2012, British Olympic venue, Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy (WPNSA).

George Wilson, the company’s Operations Director, will be sailing with team mate and daughter Laura Wilson, at tomorrow’s gruelling 4 day event alongside side some of the world’s best sailing teams from France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden.

The location chosen by the WPNSA, offers the combination of good winds and a range of sailing water from sheltered to open sea. The unique low tidal range in the UK will add an extra challenge to the championships, which are set in the centre of the Jurassic Coast.

Excited about the upcoming race Miss Wilson exclaimed: “I am really happy to be sailing in tomorrow’s race and representing Original Software. It’s going to be a brilliant day and my father and I make such a great team. Team work is really important on the water – you need to be able to communicate effectively in order to work together.”

George Wilson adds: “Original Software is committed to providing excellent support for its customers and that takes good leadership and team work, just like sailing our RS500. You’ll be able to spot us on the water as we’ll have the Original Software logo on our sail.”

In between races, the competitors can relax and enjoy a number of activities listed in the competition social programme, including a black tie party the night before the prize giving event.

“I hope that Laura and I are celebrating a winning victory at the party, but even if we don’t win, it’s great to have the opportunity to sail in such a prestigious competition with my daughter. We will be celebrating with a glass of champagne win or loose,” says Mr Wilson.

If you would like to join George and Laura at the RS500 World Championships in Weymouth, you can find more information and travel details on the competition website at: http://irsca.rssailing.net/rs500/worlds2011/

29 June 2011, – Original Software, a leading Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, announced today that it has signed a deal with Kansas City-based Helzberg Diamond Shops, Inc., for managing and automating the testing of its business-critical retail systems. Original Software’s complete solution suite for quality management, manual testing, test automation and test data verification has been selected by the retailer to address its system testing challenges and improve overall quality and timeliness of application software delivery into production.

A leading fine jewellery retailer, Helzberg Diamonds, a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. operates 234 stores across the United States plus an online store. Building a successful retail business since 1915, the company is committed to attracting new customers and maintaining customer loyalty as it grows through its multiple distribution venues.

The “customer always comes first” at Helzberg Diamonds. Steve DeMott, Director of Application Development & Support at Helzberg Diamonds stated that he was impressed with Original Software’s shared customer service philosophy. “I was impressed at Original Software’s willingness and responsiveness to our specific needs. Our applications are quite complex and Original Software was the only vendor reviewed that could work with all mission critical systems. Other software solutions evaluated couldn’t give us the level of integration we required for testing our critical applications,” said DeMott.

“Our retail applications provide the business with complete information visibility to operational performance for both our traditional and online businesses. It is therefore critical that these applications are functioning correctly with the most current processing enhancements and at the most current release levels” added DeMott. “In the past we’ve only had manual testing processes in place and with the business growing at such a fast pace, we had to look for a way to make our testing efforts more efficient and start automating the testing process. With more frequent application updates, we didn’t want to delay the release of new functionality or employ more QA resources.”

Implementation will begin in June in order to be ready for major releases of our key applications in September. Once implementation is complete, Helzberg Diamonds will be 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 solving the company’s quality process and management challenges.

Helzberg will also be implementing TestDrive-Assist and TestDrive, which are fully integrated solutions that allow companies to manage the testing 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 system errors. Its ability to automatically migrate these tests to an automated test script in TestDrive is a unique and powerful enabler for customers wanting to move to automation quickly and easily.

Finally, TestBench will also be used for addressing the validation of database effects during a test. TestBench will ensure that for any test execution, whether manual or automated, the database effects will form part of the results of the test execution.

Key to implementation success will be the time savings made in testing to bring ‘go live’ dates of new releases forward. DeMott concludes: “The Original Software solution suite is so easy to use. We have embraced the code-free approach of the solution and I’m certain that our entire QA team will be empowered as a result. The bottom line will be in the customer experience as it’s the quality of our supporting systems and self-service applications that is fundamental for a positive experience and repeat business.”

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About Helzberg: (www.helzberg.com)

Helzberg Diamonds was founded over 90 years ago, in 1915 and is headquartered in North Kansas City, Missouri. Since day one the company has been dedicated to delighting customers with superior service and high-quality jewellery. The company offers diamond and gold jewellery, such as rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. The company also offers men’s and baby jewellery, coloured gems, wedding bands, watches, and various gifts. It has 234 stores in the United States and operates as a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.

22 March 2011, – Original Software, the Application Quality Management (AQM) and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) vendor, today announced that Mr. Stuart Bishop, previously the Head of Development, has joined the Customer Services team as the newly appointed, Head of Customer Services.

The move to spearhead the company’s customer relations function supports the continued growth that Original Software is experiencing in the software testing market. Bishop’s main focus will be on driving service excellence in the company’s expanding customer base.

“Ensuring the complete satisfaction of every customer always has been and will continue to be the primary goal of Original Software,” said Bishop. “We take considerable pride in the role our software plays in our customers’ success and we are dedicated to helping them achieve their long-term quality objectives. By enhancing our range of on-going customer services and support, we will ensure that customers’ investment in our solution continues to bring a quick return on investment and maximum benefits.”

Prior to being made the Head of Customer Services, Bishop held many roles across the organisation and has been involved with the support, training and developing new products. With fourteen years of development and support experience at Original Software, Bishop’s move into his new role has been a smooth transition.

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 organisations 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
Tulin Pledger
Head of Marketing
tpledger@origsoft.com

14 March 2011, – Original Software, a leading vendor in Application Quality Management (AQM) and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) solutions, today announced that TestDrive, the only agile test automation solution in the market place already supports Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), prior to Microsoft’s official launch later in March. This support comes ahead of other suppliers of testing software.

Analyst research¹ cites that support for emerging technology continues to be an area of concern for users of test automation products. IE9 represents just one of the rapid changes in technology and the need to test on multiple browsers.

“Original Software has always been a pioneer in the testing industry and it has always been our mission to support the world’s most popular browser from day one of its next release,” said Colin Armitage, CEO at Original Software. “In general new technology is developing much faster than the testing function, making it difficult at best to test many cutting edge technologies. However, we’re ahead of the curve with TestDrive and our customers can ensure that the rollout of their web applications won’t be delayed if there are any IE9 compatibility issues.”

TestDrive is an automated testing solution designed to test GUI and browser applications “out-of-the-box”. Significant reductions in timescales and advanced levels of quality can be achieved without the complexity of traditional testing tools. TestDrive provides repeatable, reusable, automated test assets for unattended regression testing. With support for IE9, users will be able to take a library of IE8 scripts and play them back on IE9 to test applications over the new browser without having to make changes to the scripts.

Microsoft is focused on encouraging developers to build new websites and user experiences on IE9 and the developer community are getting excited about its speed and ease of use. Armitage adds: “This is in perfect synergy with TestDrive, which is equally fast and unobtrusive, allowing the user to execute tests at accelerated speed.”

¹ Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites” by Thomas E. Murphy, January 31, 2011

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 organisations 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
Tulin Pledger
Head of Marketing
tpledger@origsoft.com

09 February 2011, – Original Software, a leading vendor in Application Quality Management (AQM) and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) solutions, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the “Visionaries” quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites¹ report. The report evaluated sixteen vendors of software quality solutions based on a rigorous set of criteria that comprise ‘ability to execute’ and ‘completeness of vision’.

Tom Murphy, Research Director, at Gartner, wrote: “Economic conditions and pressure to improve time to market are placing increased emphasis on productivity. Agile development continues to make inroads into quality assurance (QA) and testing teams, and this is reflected by growing support of test planning tools for agile processes, such as scrum.”

With more complexity in IT projects and a need to respond faster to changing markets, development and QA teams have had to adapt the way they work. Original Software addresses the need for a more dynamic way of working and for agile test automation.

Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software, said: “We believe our positioning as a Visionary is confirmation of the strength of our code-free testing capabilities, which are enabling our customers to achieve higher levels of automation earlier in the life-cycle. TestDrive-Assist and TestDrive offer a unique approach for moving from manual to automated testing quickly, and offer a particular advantage in agile test automation. Our future development plans will continue to focus on making customers more productive.”

Armitage continues: “The launch of Qualify in 2010 is a further testament to our continued innovation, where we have answered the growing need for QA to be less siloed, and brought effective Quality Management right into the heart of the software delivery process.”

Qualify encompasses requirements, planning, scheduling, resource management, test execution, defect management and reporting in one platform, ensuring collaboration and communication throughout.

In addition to productivity drivers, the report also observed that changing technologies are a key trend in the ASQ market: “Current hot spots are: devices and mobile computing platforms, the growing number of browsers and validation that applications work across multiple browsers and devices, a lack of support for Apple desktops and devices, and support for the growing variety of rich Internet application (RIA) formats. In general technology is running much faster than testing companies making it difficult at best to test many cutting edge technologies.”

Armitage added: “Our strategic product focus and vision has always been to stay on top of the ever-increasing number of presentation technologies, such as Flash, Flex, Silverlight and Ajax. We have also added support for SAP during the past year, which has enabled business users and business analysts, test SAP application upgrades much more quickly and efficiently. Our ease of use and code-free approach to quality will continue to be a distinctive strength in the ASQ market. Our ability to manage the test data environment with TestBench will also be increasingly important as the need for data privacy extends beyond production systems to test data too.”

About the Magic Quadrant
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

¹ Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites” by Thomas E. Murphy, January 31, 2011

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 organisations 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
Tulin Pledger
Head of Marketing
tpledger@origsoft.com

20 September 2010 – Original Software, the Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, today announced its participation at the Ovum Strategy Briefing; Software Testing and Performance Management, where George Wilson, the company’s Operations Director and industry speaker, will be presenting on Agile test automation at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London on Wednesday the 22nd September.

George Wilson’s presentation entitled ‘Agile Test Automation – Truth, Oxymoron or Lie?’ will investigate what determines the short and long term success of test automation, what to automate and what to test manually. Wilson will determine how you can manage the jump to automation in an agile environment and in a seamless and painless manner.

Agile project management teams need to adopt technology that adapts to a company’s process for Agile. However many Agile teams have had a limited choice of test management and automation tools, which often seem rigid and inflexible to use in such a fast moving development environment.

“The truth of the matter is that traditional test tools struggle to work in an agile environment,” said George Wilson, COO at Original Software. “These kinds of tools only really suit application testing that involves long development cycles and strict change management regulations. Otherwise they simply won’t work. This is mainly due to the fact that they were designed to work in a ‘test last’ environment whereas the agile model is more a ‘test first, test continuously’ model.”

“The Agile ethos has to be one of tight communications and close-knit working groups in order for the project to be successful. Typically, legacy tools require users to have specialist skills and the cost of licences for these products is so huge that many organisations tend to only buy licenses for just a few select members of a team. This goes against Agile principles,” concluded Wilson.

The Ovum Strategy Briefing is aimed at senior testing practitioners and managers, focusing on trends, futures and the big issues in test management. It aims to encourage networking and bring like minded executives together to discuss techniques, approaches and tools, disseminating good ideas within the industry.

For more information or to book at place at the Strategy Briefing, visit http://www.butlergroup.com/briefingIntroduction.asp?mcr=STPM220910&scr=STPM220910

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About Ovum: www.ovum.com
Ovum is a telecoms, IT services and software company that analyses changes, threats and opportunities ahead for our clients including small companies, Fortune 500 corporations, and governments around the world. Ovum is part of the Datamonitor Group. Together, Ovum and Datamonitor provide leading European business information in the technology, information, communications and telecoms sectors.

About Ovum Strategy Briefings: http://www.butlergroup.com/briefings.asp
Ovum Strategy Briefings are high-level, business-to-business events that bring leading IT suppliers and solution providers together with senior-level decision makers from end-user organisations. The format is quite unique, consisting of a keynote introduction by Ovum, followed by presentations from the Primary Sponsors and other participating sponsors. The day concludes with a Forum Debate, chaired by Ovum.

23 April 2010 – A study into the views of Application Development Managers and IT Executives, announced today by Original Software, revealed that the need for business agility is driving the growth in spend for Application Quality Management (AQM) and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) solutions. However, the same study also uncovered an incredible discontent with current solutions available in the market place, with 84% of respondents claiming that they are not meeting their needs.

 The independent study, undertaken during March 2010, throughout the UK and USA, revealed that the need for enhanced business agility was the highest rated market driver for improving software quality, with 65% of respondents citing this as their main reason for investing in AQM and ASQ solutions. Almost half of the respondents claimed that the increasing complexity in their IT environments was also a key driver.

While the market focus on pure Agile development, the survey exposed that the real growth area is in mix and match development techniques, with 72% of organisations using combined approaches. Either developing their own hybrid blend, by choosing best practices from various methodologies, or by taking a combined approach, using different methodologies across departments and on different projects.

Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software stated: “The study has shown that systems supporting these developments need to be able to cope with complex scenarios and multiple, concurrent process models. When asked about the shortfalls of their current AQM solution, it’s not surprising that 38% are crying out for an option that would allow them to map different processes and methodologies into their system and not be straight-jacketed into one particular way of working.”

Software quality does seem to have increased in importance within organisations in the last few years, with 75% of companies recognising that ensuring application quality is vital to their business success. This is a substantial increase and a positive move from a year and a half ago when Original Software conducted a similar survey and found that many still viewed ensuring software quality as a nice-to-have or non-essential practice.

The study also revealed that IT budgets for AQM and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) are beginning to look healthier with 43% expecting their budgets to increase, (up from 21% in the 2008 survey). Only 10% expected spend on Quality Assurance to decrease (down from 31% last time).

 The 84% discontent with current solutions is mainly attributable to the way development teams are now working. With more complexity in IT projects and a need to respond faster to changing markets, development teams have had to adapt the way they work. The solutions they are using are just not meeting these new requirements. 37% of respondents suffer from a lack of cross-project information and require solutions to provide a unified view of all projects currently underway. 36% would like to see a solution that allows more effective communication and collaboration between team members.

With the current recession driving the need for organisations having to do more with less, optimising resources and enhancing productivity is key for AQM and ASQ solutions. 34% of those surveyed think that their systems are not user-friendly enough. 32% would like to be able to better manage their resources and 28% want a solution to provide them with real-time visibility into project status. The ability to be able to personalise the information users view and to be able to better trace requirements throughout the lifecycle, are also widely desired, with 22% of respondents unable to achieve these goals with their current solutions.

“Flexibility is vital when it comes to AQM solutions of the future. Businesses are being driven towards being more agile, so it stands to reason that users are demanding dynamic solutions that can adapt to business changes quickly and easily. AQM that supports a mixture of development techniques is now absolutely essential and vendors that don’t respond to this are not reacting to customers quickly enough. The future of AQM has to be focused on providing better visibility, collaboration and control across multiple projects.” Armitage concluded.

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About the survey

This independent study was conducted by emedia Ltd. It surveyed 101 Senior IT executives and Application Development Managers during the month of March 2010. A full report on the survey results is available from Original Software upon request.

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 organisations 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

Tulin Pledger
Head of Marketing
+44 1256 338 689
tpledger@origsoft.com