Welcome

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of the AppLabs Perspective.

In spite of the economic slowdown, organisations are keen on building greater quality into business critical software, quite simply because, a missed defect may bring their business to its knees. Often times, testing teams that are integral part of the development function fall short of extending the requisite objectivity while testing the product. An independent testing provider makes the product much more reliable. Further, routine product enhancements and the consequent release cycles, regulatory compliance, integration of diverse technologies are prompting companies to seek independent testing.

Today, testing has moved ahead in the development lifecycle as the companies understand better that pushing the testing process to the end of the product lifecycle may result in costly errors. No wonder, businesses are now looking for strategic external testing partners who can seamlessly integrate with their internal development teams and processes. The 'testing only' providers have extensively verticalized their services by building domain-specific testing tools and test environments as well as by hiring testing staff who are domain experts.

This edition presents a range of business and technical views. Our Industry Comment focuses on how to best address budget constraints through testing, especially in a climate of economic unrest. In our Case Study, we discuss the success of performance testing for a retail website. Lastly, the Whitepaper presents a detailed understanding of improving testing services with reference to AppLabs support to the TMMi foundation.

We hope you will enjoy reading the newsletter. I would love to get your feedback at info@applabs.com.

Best wishes,

Sashi Reddi
Founder and Chairman
AppLabs

Business Insight

Owing to the fluctuating economic condition, departments, including the IT are experiencing a mounting pressure of improving the productivity and efficiency within the constrained budget. Here is a paper that address means to curb the issues.

Please click here to read more.

Technical Viewpoint

The TMMi framework, developed to complement the existing CMMI, provides a structured presentation of maturity levels, allowing for standard TMMi assessments and certification. The TMMi has a rapidly growing uptake globally, and owes its popularity to being the only independent test process measurement method, and thereby AppLabs, already a CMMI Level 5 company, aligned with TMMi. AppLabs is currently in the process of accrediting our TMMi model and our experienced Test Consultants with the TMMi Foundation. AppLabs will be offering TMMi reviews as part of our Consultancy Service line in the near future. Please click here to read more.

Company News

AppLabs in the Spotlight

The leading analyst firm, Everest Group recently showcased AppLabs in their spotlight section. The report reiterates AppLabs' undisputed leadership in the testing industry. It talks extensively on how AppLabs' testing expertise has resulted in business gains for a big US based Insurance customer.

Please click here to read the complete report.

AppLabs survey reveals that adoption of Cloud Computing is on the rise

AppLabs has announced the results of a survey the company undertook recently to showcase the growing interest in the adoption of Cloud Computing. The analysis of the survey data indicates that 30 percent of the companies have already adopted Cloud Computing and an additional 20 percent are planning to do so within the next 12 months. Additional analysis reveals that one-third of the respondents felt that lack of awareness was the major constraint, while another 21 percent cited security concerns as a major deterrent for adopting Cloud Computing.

Please click here to read the complete analysis.

AppLabs presents at the Butler Group Symposium

AppLabs' Senior Consultant John Brennan was recently invited to speak at the Butler Group Application Development and Lifecycle Management Symposium held in London. The Case Study entitled 'Mission Critical Performance Testing into Unchartered Territory - Working to Ensure Success' discussed the AppLabs - Borland engagement in a project for one of the leading national charities.

AppLabs hosts a Webinar entitled 'Testing in the Cloud'

Ralph Decker, AVP of AppLabs hosted a webinar entitled 'Testing in the Cloud - Realistic Performance, Load and Stress Testing'. The cloud-computing phenomenon, a popular industry term, is fast evolving, from a futuristic technology to a commercially viable alternative. Owing to its benefits ranging from reductions in cost of ownership to location independence and its profound impact on IT and business, firms are embracing this concept.

Please click here to download the webinar presentation.

AppLabs Receives 2009 Best of Philadelphia Award

AppLabs has been selected for the 2009 Best of Philadelphia Award in the Technology category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA). The USCA 'Best of Local Business' Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country.

AppLabs to exhibit at STARWest 2009

AppLabs is exhibiting at STARWEST 2009 to be held in October at Anaheim, CA, USA.

Please click here for more details.

AppLabs at EuroSTAR 2009

AppLabs has once again been selected to present at the EuroSTAR 2009, Europe's most successful and widely acknowledged gathering of software testing professionals. Duncan Small, Senior Consultant of AppLabs is speaking on 'Collaboration not Competition' on Tuesday, December 1, '09 at Stockholm.

For more information on the event, please click here.

AppLabs in the News

Outlook Business - The Sequoia Way

CFO - Sustainable Testing

ZDNet: Survey: Cloud computing hits big time

InformationWeek - 8 Questions To Ask Before Going Live In The Cloud

Express Computer - Bridging the Labor Gap

The Human Factor - The Field Trip
Perspective Newsletter
Issue 13
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WebEx Schedule

Meeting the Compliance Challenges in Test and Development Environments, 26 August 2009

The challenges pertaining to compliance in test and development environments range from saving sensitive data to adhering to compliance rules. The technical challenges of saving data which is available across the multiple applications and versions, needs a deep knowledge of all applications, which can be time consuming and resource intensive. Also, developing custom code in-house to protect sensitive application data is complex and intensive, requiring intimate application knowledge and continuous maintenance.

The pressure of data usage by the governing bodies, the outcome data breaches and compliance issues, like fair and lawful processing, processing minimum data, securing data, add to its list of challenges. IT organizations must address these and at the same time, they need to manage ever increasing audit and regulatory compliance requirements, as well as IT costs and budgets. All these concerns will be addressed in this live webinar hosted by Huw Price, Managing Director of Grid-Tools, a strategic partner of AppLabs. The webinar will take you through the following solutions:

- Database Subsetting, creating secure, broken down versions of a production database used for non‐production environments
- Data Masking, using obfuscating functions to anonymize production data so that when it is used in non-production it is unrecognizable and compliant with regulating bodies
- Synthetic Test Data Generation, through a modeling and sampling process, data that has all of the referential integrity and likeness of production environments is generated from scratch.

To register for the webinar please click here.
Case Study

Build-a-Bear

Build-a-Bear The website was not a typical retail site; it was designed to provide customers with a complete interactive experience - a virtual world was to be created with different areas hosting different functions. Dave East, Director of IT Network Services at Build-a-Bear, highlighted their requirements; they wanted to ensure multiple users would be able to use the site simultaneously without having an effect on performance. They wanted to be able to understand the customer experience of a real time user and ensure stress on the site would not hinder performance. The objective of the test was to simulate the user behavior of gaming users and ensure the Build-A-Bear servers could cope with a load of up to 5000 users. more+
Employee Spotlight

Rich Corbridge, Head of Security Testing, AppLabs, US more+