Archive for the ‘Customer announcements’ Category

Customers Get Quality-Centric VIP Treatment

Original Software’s robust approach to software quality helps Vermont Information Processing reduce release bottlenecks and improve customer support forecasting

June 28, 2010 – Vermont Information Processing (VIP), IT solutions supplier to the beverage wholesale industry, has utilized Original Software’s end-to-end testing solution to increase its software quality. Even with an intensely accelerated development schedule, VIP has improved its customer upgrade experience and reduced pressure on its support team. This in turn has enabled the business to respond effectively to the complex requirements of its customers during volatile market conditions.

A period of market consolidation had caused significant growing pains for VIP. As its customers’ operations increased in complexity, the software that they relied on to manage their business needed to be able to handle much more complicated processes. VIP’s old development cycle just didn’t fit this new development schedule. Putting out new releases became painful, not just for customers and its development team, but the support team was also beginning to feel the repercussions.

With the help of Original Software, VIP was able to develop a much more robust approach to software quality. The company has completely turned around its QA process and overcome its customers’ cautious attitudes to upgrades. VIP has now transformed into a software testing center of excellence with happy customers who are keen to upgrade to new releases.

Since implementation, VIP’s QA department has increased the scope of test coverage, taking control its test environments, comprehensively unit testing and running full regression tests on all system updates. Previously customers went on average three years before updating systems, creating a bottleneck in the upgrade process, now 97% are running a recent version of the software. The team has also vastly reduced the strain on support. Fixing a single bug could save support around 80 hours; it takes a lot less time to run the regression suite now, which on average turns up 10-12 similar bugs. This equates to five and a half months of support time per release!

VIP moved from having one major update release every three years to producing major releases once a year, with numerous maintenance builds in-between. The old eight month-long beta testing phase was too time consuming for the business with its new rapid development schedule and it could no longer afford to do this. With the crunching development cycle, quality was becoming an issue for VIP. “Our customers were really frustrated with us,” explained Bobby Erwin, Quality Control Analyst at VIP. “To get a new feature, they’d also get all these other problems to boot. This would become a strain on the support team too, as they’d spend hours on the phone going through problems.”

“Our main business drivers were to reduce the level of risk by increasing the scope of test coverage. Original Software was the ideal choice” said Erwin.

VIP purchased the solutions from Original Software in May 2007 and once they’d had the initial training it took two or three months to develop their first regression capabilities. They’ve been developing and building on these tests ever since. “Prior to this we conducted no regression testing at all – just a month or so of acceptance testing by customer service and then the beta tests. Now we have a battery of tests we perform every time we release,” imparted Erwin.

“We are providing a much more robust and better product to the end users,” said Bobby Erwin. “Our support and customer service teams are delighted. Our builds are just so much better now, and we can also tell them exactly how risky a release is, and predict the levels of support that might be needed.”

“The regression tests help us manage our exposure: improving experience for the customer, decreasing support needs for a given update. Testing gives us a feel for how stable the build is. It’s a known entity. If the build looks good in testing, we can install with greater confidence. If we find problems, we get a better idea of the support resources needed,” confirmed Chris Boucher, Support Manager at VIP.

To read the full customer case study, please visit: http://www.origsoft.com/customer-stories/vip

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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
Kate Banyard (Née Mackinder)
Media Relations Officer
+44 1256 338 689
Kbanyard@origsoft.com

Big Five Bank Selects Original Software as Preferred Supplier for Agile Testing Solutions

TestDrive and TestDrive-Assist provide a winning combination for Agile Test Automation

20th January 2010 – Original Software, the Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, today announced that it has signed a global agreement with one of the ‘big five’ UK banks to be its preferred testing solution provider for Agile development projects worldwide.

Agile development has increased in popularity with IT departments because of the way it can adapt to changing needs and help solve the complexities of development projects. The bank is increasingly deploying an agile approach to its software development and, after a comprehensive market evaluation, decided that the combination of TestDrive and TestDrive-Assist from Original Software was the most flexible and appropriate test automation solution on the market for use in its Agile developments. The preferred supplier status means that any test team from the bank can select Original Software’s solutions from their global vendor list and make an instant purchase, without having to go through a lengthy procurement or tendering processes.

Original Software’s manual testing solution, TestDrive-Assist, discreetly records tests while they are performed and provides an audit trail and clear information for reproducing bugs. Its ability to automatically migrate these tests to an automated test script in TestDrive, the company’s test automation solution, is a unique and powerful enabler for customers practicing agile or iterative development techniques. The functionality allows customers to test earlier, in bite-sized pieces and, by the end of the scrum or iteration, these scripts form the foundation of a future automated test.

Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software said: “The strength of our offering in the agile space is testimony to the fact that we are on the bank’s global price list. Our solutions will enable them to reduce the time-to-market for new developments, which is critical for competitive advantage within the banking sector. At the same time, we are able to provide a full audit trail for regulatory compliance.”

He continued: “Customers practicing agile methodologies across the globe are finding our solutions easy to implement, and the reuse and repeatability of our manual tests really pay off. Automation can be a powerful enabler in Agile development, but traditional testing tools are not flexible enough and script maintenance becomes too much of a burden. TestDrive’s ability to re-run test scripts, even when the application under test has been modified, adds value with each iteration.”

“SCRUMS are wider than just testing, but all members of the team can get real benefit from our solutions. Business Analysts can use the mark-up functionality to recommend changes to the design specifications, feeding product enhancements back into the development loop.” expanded Armitage.

Original Software received praise for its capabilities in enabling agile development in a 2009 report by independent industry analyst group, Ovum. In the report, written by Paul Herzlich, the company’s solutions were applauded for being a better fit for agile processes than any competitive functional test automation suite. The report can be downloaded free of charge from Original Software’s website – http://www.origsoft.com/news-desk/analyst-commentary/

Debenhams sets store by improved quality

Retailer invests for the future in TestBench

February, 3, 2009 – Debenhams, the leading department stores group, has turned to Original Software to help save its IT department time and money, enabling it to deliver system enhancements more rapidly and raise the quality of its dotcom website through more thorough testing of the back-end systems that drive it.

With online sales bucking the retail trend in the current economic slowdown, the Debenhams.com site is of strategic importance to the group. Now more than ever before, ensuring the quality of, and IT service delivery to, the online shop front, is vital to capitalising on its success.

Dominic Nash, Business Systems Controller at Debenhams is anticipating significant time and resource savings as a result of their investment in Original Software. “It’s been just a few weeks, but we’re already up and running with the system, and a task that had previously taken us more than two weeks – extracting test data – took less than half a day using TestBench”.

The Debenhams team wanted a comprehensive solution to help with unit, system, end-to-end, and regression testing of their IBM systems, which were largely being manually tested up until this point. They undertook comprehensive study of tools on the market, looking at performance, ease-of-use and specific product features.

Nash continued: “The functionality in TestBench is first rate. Being able to automate tests to run overnight will generate substantial time-savings. The database extraction tool allows us to quickly and easily extract data from the live systems, creating a subset for use in a realistic testing environment. You can create checkpoints, rolling back the changes and resetting the environment if it becomes corrupted by any testing activity and TestBench is so user-friendly it’s taken us virtually no time at all to get up and running.”

“The same Debenhams team will prove even more advantageous to the business, delivering applications with increased agility, improving efficiency and raising service levels across the board.” concludes Nash.

About Debenhams plc
Debenhams is a leading department stores group with a strong presence in key product categories including Womenswear, Menswear, Childrenswear, Home and Health and Beauty. Debenhams has a total of 140 department stores in the UK and the Republic of Ireland and 10 Desire by Debenhams stores, which is a small store concept featuring a mix of womenswear, accessories, lingerie, cosmetics and childrenswear. Debenhams has 44 international franchise stores in 15 countries and an online store, www.debenhams.com, through which much of the Debenhams range is available.

Debenhams is the second largest department store chain in the UK.

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.”

Retailer Anna’s Linens Selects Original Software

Automated Software Testing Helps Retailer More Quickly and Accurately Test its Merchandise Management and Financial Applications

November, 4, 2007 – Home fashion retailer Anna’s Linens has turned to Original Software, a leader in software test automation, to provide a complete quality assurance and testing solution to help the national retailer streamline application updates and enhancements of their merchandise management and financials applications.

The California-based retailer, with 225 250 stores in 17 20 states, recently purchased Original Software’s TestBench solution to more thoroughly test applications from both a visual and data perspective. Anna’s Linens was attracted to the accuracy and automated features of the Original Software solutions as well as the products’ ability to manage the test data.

“By integrating Original Software’s automated solutions with our existing change management application, Anna’s Linens now has a comprehensive environment to develop and distribute business critical applications” said Scott Gladstone, COO of Anna’s Linens. “The TestBench product will enable us to accelerate the time to production, which has become increasingly important as our business environment expands and grows.”

“By using Original Software automated solutions, Anna’s Linens can ensure that it is testing its critical business applications accurately, quickly and cost effectively,” said Gregory M. Sengpiel, General Manager, Americas, for Original Software. “Testing constitutes upwards of 40- to 50-percent of application development life-cycle. Consequently, this was a critical issue for Anna’s Linens. Anna’s was interested in reducing time to market through use of Original Software applications.”

About Anna’s Linens
Anna’s Linens, headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, is a rapidly growing specialty retailer of quality, value priced domestics and home furnishings. The company was founded in 1987 by its current president and chief executive officer, Alan Gladstone. Anna’s Linens operates 225 250 stores in 17 20 states and has more than 2,000 employees. For additional information, visit the Anna’s Linens website at www.AnnasLinens.com.

Stations Casinos Selects Original Software

Automated Software Testing Helps Leading Gaming corporation Improve Application Quality and Compliance

September, 14, 2007 – Gaming and entertainment company, Station Casinos Inc., has turned to Original Software (www.origsoft.com), a leader in software test automation, to provide a quality assurance and testing solution that will enable them to reduce risk, improve time to market and improve the quality of their application developments.

The Nevada-based gaming and entertainment company, with their numerous restaurants and entertainment venues, recently purchased a range of solutions from Original Software, including TestBench Advanced, which tests all server-side and database transactions; TestDrive Gold, a GUI and Web testing solution; Extractor, an analysis tool that extracts and manages data in a secure test environment; and TestDrive-Assist, which supplies active support for manual testing.

Station Casinos selected Original Software’s products to more thoroughly test applications from both a visual and data perspective, as well as being able to obfuscate their player records for security and compliance purposes. They were attracted to the accuracy and automated features of the Original Software solutions as well as the products’ capacity to manage the test data.

“By using Original Software automated solutions, Station Casinos can ensure that it is testing its critical business applications more accurately, efficiently and cost effectively, than they were able to previously” said Gregory M. Sengpiel, general manager, Americas, for Original Software.

About Station Casinos, Inc
Station Casinos, Inc. is a leading provider of gaming and entertainment in Nevada. Station’s properties are regional entertainment destinations and include various amenities, including numerous restaurants, entertainment venues, movie theaters, bowling and convention/banquet space, as well as traditional casino gaming offerings such as video poker, slot machines, table games, bingo and race and sports wagering. For additional information, visit their website at www.stationcasinos.com.

About Original Software
Original Software offers automated software testing and quality assurance solutions that deliver tangible benefits across a wide range of IT and application environments. As a recognized innovator, Original Software’s goal is to reduce business risk and improve application time to market for IT departments through the development of class leading automated solutions.

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, Skandia and hundreds of others.

Original Software operates central offices near Chicago and London. Their solutions can be obtained through these offices or through a network of qualified and knowledgeable business partners throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australasia and the Americas.