'Companies don't recognize importance of testing'

BANGALORE, INDIA: Software testing, which is considered to be part of software development, is used by almost all the IT companies who are into software development. As we see different types of testing services in the mark, cloud-based testing is one among them and picking up slowly in the market.

According to the latest Gartner report, worldwide software testing market is expected to be at $13 billion and the global market for outsourced testing to be around $6.1 billion, of which India is expected to contribute a 70 per cent share.

Also read: Software testing an emerging evergreen industry

In an interaction with Abhigna N G of CIOL, Akshay Aggarwal, country general manager of  Micro Focus, shared his views on the growing software testing market and the importance given by IT organizations to software testing. Excerpts:

CIOL: What kind of solutions does Micro Focus provide in the area of software testing for cloud applications?

Akshay Aggarwal: Micro Focus Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) provides a cohesive enterprise cloud strategy. The solutions are aimed at accelerating the development, deployment, hosting, and management of business applications in the cloud.

Also read: Software testing plays a remedial role in the SDLC

Its enterprise application management and modernization software can provide a fast, low-risk, high-return alternative to the rip-and-replace strategies as well as a smooth transition into Web services, Service Orientated Architectures (SOA) and cloud-based offerings. We are the only vendor that offers for running enterprise business applications in a public cloud environment, whereas most cloud companies revolve around providing infrastructure-as-a-service.

Micro Focus provides a specific cloud-agnostic Enterprise Platform as a Service (EPaaS) that allows IT, SIs and ISVs to continue along a modernization journey of their core business-critical applications to a cloud computing destination.

CIOL: Can you brief our readers on how SilkPerformer CloudBurst’ lets software quality teams rapidly launch any-size peak-load performance test without the burden of managing complex infrastructures?

AA: Web is the future of any economy, and, as organizations develop web applications, that will be used by several thousands of users worldwide. The traditional methods of testing require far too much hardware and are not able to scale to meet the demands of today’s web applications.

Also read: Trends in software testing for 2011

Micro Focus recently launched SilkPerformer CloudBurst, a peak-demand load-testing capability based on Micro Focus Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) technology; SilkPerformer CloudBurst utilizes the cloud to meet these resource demands using a flexible, pay-as-you-go, consumption-based pricing model.

By extending SilkPerformer’s on-premise model with cloud load-generation technology, CloudBurst enables customers the flexibility to drive load from either on-premise or in the cloud or both at the same time. This model also has the advantage of being able to monitor the underlying systems and provide performance diagnostics with one integrated product.

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CIOL: Do you think companies in India are giving importance to software testing on cloud? If yes, how are you addressing it?

AA: Applications are critical for any business and after toying with the idea of cloud over the last couple of years, businesses have started understanding the value proposition of cloud. Businesses are becoming increasingly service oriented and cloud based so that there is lesser capex investment, which goes from their side, and it actually comes as an opex investment to them.

As discussed earlier, Micro Focus SilkPerformer CloudBurst is a key offering that Micro Focus has in this space. Through SilkPerformer CloudBurst, the users can accrue the benefits of assured performance, easy management, controlled costs, enterprise application coverage and problem resolution.

CIOL: What are the latest trends in software testing for the year 2011? How do you see the software testing market this year?

AA: Software testing is one of the booming sectors in IT industry and India is on its way to becoming a global leader. There has been an upward trend in the companies outsourcing their software testing services to India which is the primary factor driving this growth.

Gartner has pegged the worldwide software testing market at $13 billion and the global market for outsourced testing to be around $6.1 billion, of which India is expected to contribute a 70 per cent share. IDC reports that the market opportunity for Indian offshore testing companies is currently at $5 billion, and is estimated to rise to $10 billion in the coming years. 

CIOL: How about cloud-based testing business?

AA: With cloud testing, businesses don’t need to worry about how much of load can be generated using this offering. They can generate ‘n’ number of load depending on the kind of application they have. Using the same infrastructure that I am talking about, the customers can test their applications that are running on the cloud and the applications that are running within the enterprise firewall. Telcos are definitely big-time users for this; they are excited to have this offering and they see a lot of value in it.

These offerings are now being made available to the world and in the coming days there will be more and more applications and infrastructure, which is going to move on cloud. The important message for the testers here is it is imperative they up-skill and move to the next level so that they get start to use these services better.

CIOL: How do you see organizations giving importance to software testing?

AA: Most companies don’t recognize the importance of testing. Software testing is generally considered a “nice to have” function and not a “must have”. Most organizations fail to recognize that software testing is a fundamental component of software quality assurance and represents a review of specification, design and coding.