Archive for the ‘Company announcements’ Category

Original Software Delivers Record Breaking 3rd Quarter

3rd Quarter Results More Than Double That Of 2006

January, 3, 2009 – Original Software, a leading provider of automated software testing solutions today announced a record 144% year-on-year growth for its third quarter ending 30th December 2007.

“Although we are used to continued strong growth, this quarter has been our best in our ten year history” said Original Software CEO, Colin Armitage. “And we are on course to outstrip the market growth rate by a factor of 3. This has really set us up for a great 2008, and is testament to how positively the market place is embracing our next generation software testing solutions.”

With recent success, Original is delighted to welcome aboard several new business relationships including; Germania Insurance, Newcastle Building Society, Hilton Grand Vacations, Elsevier and Euronet USA.

Over the last 10 years, more than 400 organizations operating in 25 countries have come to depend on Original Software for their software testing solutions Current users range from small software development shops to major multinationals, including: Cargill Global Financial Solutions, Circuit City Stores, Pfizer Pharmaceutical (Ireland), DHL, Coca-Cola, and Skandia.

“These accomplishments put Original Software on strong footing for attaining its goals in 2008,” continued Armitage. “I want to thank the entire Original Software team who have worked so hard to produce these results and encourage them to continue working diligently to attain our goals for the year ahead.”

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 – 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”.

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.

“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.

An Aspirin For The Testing Community

Original Software launches TestDrive-Assist and community site with free downloads

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, its unique solution aimed at streamlining the manual testing process without taking away any control from the tester. ManualTesting.com is a community site for software quality professionals containing numerous free resources designed to alleviate the headaches caused by the burden of time-consuming manual testing on QA departments. The site also features a free trial download of the newly-launched product, which can reduce the time spent on manual testing by over a third.

The new website provides access to free resources and downloads such as a manual testing e-seminar, an ‘ask the experts’ zone for help and advice, the latest whitepaper entitled Manual Testers Don’t Grow On Trees and also light relief in the form of a community blog. Next week will see the addition of a rather addictive online game – the pit-stop challenge, where players can win a Nintendo Wii.

According to IDC, spend on software test 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 – the QA departments continue to rely on manual processes for 80 percent or more of their software testing. In fact, most development teams carry out little or no automation of their testing – choosing instead to run a completely manual process.

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. The latest version includes a new link validation panel and enhancements to the spell checking functionality as well as the option to import a test plan to use as a checklist.

“For the majority of test teams, automated testing doesn’t work effectively for them, is too complicated or simply not appropriate. It is a fact that manual testing is here to stay, but the process continues to be a major bottle neck of application development” said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software. “With the launch of manual testing.com we hope to assist the community with their manual testing processes. As an industry we are still too focused on trying to replace human testing rather than using automation to help testers be more effective. We launched TestDrive-Assist to rectify this. It is an integral part of our total testing solution and can help out testers by streamlining the manual process by more than a third.”

Original Expands its European Sales Operations to Benelux

September, 20, 2007 – Original Software, a leader in software test automation, has expanded their European sales operation by opening up a direct presence in The Netherlands, which will also cover Belgium and Luxemburg. This move comes at a time when the company is enjoying strong growth and positive sales on the back of their ability to deliver solutions that reduce application time to market and improve software quality through technology leadership and innovation.

Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software, comments, “We are finding our customers very enthusiastic about our fresh approach. It seems the software test industry had become a little skeptical of automation in general over the last few years, but the market is very positive towards our new way of thinking and this expansion is testament to such an encouraging response.”

The operation will be spearheaded by Colin Pollitt who recently joined the company as Business Development Manager, He will focus on expanding Original’s customer base whilst delivering key messages to the wider Benelux IT community.

“I am very excited to part of the growing success at Original Software,” Pollitt explains. “There has been a strong increase in business activity in this region over the last 6-12 months. The market is positively embracing our code free technology and re-useable scripting techniques, as these have been problem areas for many people in the past.”

TestDrive-Assist is available as a dedicated manual testing support solution or can be incorporated with the Original Software’s Test-Drive Gold solution to allowing the user to benefit from automated regression testing, code-free scripting and self-healing scripts.

Pollitt, of British Dutch origin, brings valuable Oracle sales experience and extensive iSeries knowledge to the team and is looking forward to a challenging venture. “I am happy to be part of the Original Software and I am thrilled to be delivering new test automation technology to the market.”

One of the key messages Pollitt is keen to communicate is that automation success is possible with just three simple steps, taken at the customers own pace. “At Original Software we believe that the key requirement is to align effort with benefits while embracing the other requirements at every stage. We call this approach ‘Crawl, Walk, and then Run’ to testing success.”

Large corporations such as Pfizer of Benelux are already enjoying the rewards from this approach. Brendon McMahon, managing director, Millennium Software who aided Pfizer’s FDA compliance said, “The reduced testing has saved Pfizer a lot of money…There is no better way to do this as far as I can see.” Other big brands in the region include Nike and Sligro, who are also saving time, money and resources on software testing.

Original Software launches testing proficiency certification program for iSeries users

Hands-On Training Enables Valok GMSS to Improve Software and Consultation Offerings

September, 5, 2006 - As automated software development tools have become commonplace, proven proficiencies are increasingly being required by employers. Original Software is providing developers, testers, quality professionals and consultants with hands-on training and certification for their automated software testing platform, TestBench for iSeries systems.

The certification program is comprised of printed education materials, ‘class time’ and hands-on automated test training time. As one of the only software testing certification programs that requires participants to actually use an automated tool, Original Software certified professionals are recognized as having proven real-world experience. Robert Stammel, founder of Valok Global Midrange Software Solutions (Valok GMSS), is the first recipient of Original Software’s TestBench certification.

“Best-practices and hands-on experience are in demand throughout the testing industry, both from corporations and consultancies,” said Stammel. “TestBench certification was undertaken in line with Valok GMSS policy on customer support to provide high quality pre and post sales support for our customers through vendor accredited support staff. By adding certified representation of our proficiency with automated testing tools from Original Software, we’re able to provide extra ‘peace of mind’ to our customers.”

“Testing software can be a complicated business – compounded by the ‘mechanic effect’. Very few people in an organization can make sense of developer-ese, making it difficult to know if potential employees or partners have the expertise they say they do,” said Colin Armitage, CEO, Original Software. “With an actual certificate of aptitude from a leading automated testing provider, companies can be at ease about the credentials of those they wish to hire.”

Original Software expands Americas operation

Greg Sengpiel Joins as General Manager, Americas

February, 7, 2006 – Original Software today announced that Mr. Greg Sengpiel has joined the company as general manager for the Americas, to spearhead the company’s continued expansion in the market. Mr. Sengpiel will focus on expanding Original Software’s customer base within the financial, healthcare and retail industries, and manage the sales and marketing teams in this region.

“The growth of complex web and internet applications is driving a need for reliable software testing solutions that accelerate go-to-market timelines,” said Sengpiel. “Compliance regulations, especially in the U.S., combine to create bottlenecks for IT departments, particularly in the financial and healthcare industries, and companies know that efficient testing is critical to this process.”

Mr. Sengpiel joins Original Software from senior management and sales positions with companies such as Compucom Systems Inc., Sungard Data Systems and Hitachi Computer Products. Mr. Sengpiel brings eleven years of sales and marketing experience in the high technology industry, working with large enterprises throughout North America.

Original Software focuses on channel and alliance relations

Stuart Lockyer appointed Channel and Alliances Manager of worldwide operations

February, 6, 2006 - Original Software today announced a new dedicated channel and alliance program, to be directed by the Channel and Alliances Manager, Mr. Stuart Lockyer. In this new position, Lockyer will expand and manage the company’s customer base throughout North America, the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia.

“The industry’s need for smart, simple to use automated software testing tools has skyrocketed over the past several years as IT development cycles are pushed to the limit and compliance regulations demand more from already thinned IT departments,” said Lockyer. “Our focus on a channel and alliance support program will bring our testing solution to a broader range of customers around the globe. I’m looking forward to the challenges of building our open platform customer base and continuing to expand our iSeries base.”

Mr. Lockyer moves into his new role after two years as head of customer service at Original Software. Prior to joining Original Software, he developed and managed the U.K. services business at business intelligence company, Business Objects. Mr. Lockyer brings eighteen years of business development, marketing and management experience in the software industry, working with business including Compuware’s Test Automation Division and Intersolv’s PVCS Change Management group.

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.

« Newer Posts