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Follow UsThe demand for software testing and validation is growing steadily and Indian players including pure-play testing specialists as well as IT biggies like Infosys and Wipro are ramping up their expertise and presence in this area
Maveric Systems, a seven-year-old testing company is one such firm that aims to capture a chunk of this market. P Venkatesh, director and co-founder of Maveric Systems spoke to Priya Padmanabhan from CyberMedia News about trends in the testing market and company’s plans to differentiate against bigger players. Excerpts:
Yes, all the majors have an established, discrete practice in testing and have shown sizeable growth. At the same time, all the pure play ones have also shown robust growth and are in that phase. It just indicates that the market has recognized the value of this practice and that all the players are therefore seeing growth opportunity in this segment. The number of players (composite and pure play together) is small internationally as well as in India. There would be competition only when the number increases.
When the practice matures, we will also witness another influencing development - the question of independence. Currently, given the number of players and their size, this independence is viewed in the limited context of the project -whether the composite player is involved in services other than testing for that project. The next level would be the independence at the client level –the testing provider has no other relationship other than that of testing with the client and then at the service level- the provider has no service other than testing to offer. As this criteria for independence evolves, one would witness the rise of pure play players.
What are the advantages of a model driven approach to testing vis-à-vis code centric approach?
There are two principal methods of testing: White box testing and Black box testing. Any requirement based validation falls under black box testing and code based testing is called white box testing.
The rationale for code-based validation is to ensure that in the given platform the codes have been correctly written. It does not validate the functionality it is supposed to serve. Black box testing is done to validate the functionality.
Model based testing improves the quality of the black box testing and if structured well, can minimize the errors in production and thereby considerably reduce the cost and time involved in implementation.
How big is the market you are trying to address?
Gartner in 2006 has estimated the market for software testing at $13 billion and the outsourced market at $6.1 billion. At a Wipro analyst presentation in 2007, it was indicated that the market size for offshore testing would be $11 billion in 2010.
What are the trends that are shaping the market today?
At the service provider level, there are basically three classes of providers- platform providers, tool-based providers and pure service providers.
Technology and functional environment involving data exchange and regulation is constantly evolving and most financial institutions are going global. This means that they need to comply with these changes swiftly and comprehensively. Platform providers provide this service.
A new crop of tool-based service providers have merged who predominantly follow a code based model. In some cases, knowledge embedded tools have started to emerge, signifying the next level of evolution.
If one looks at the dominant types of testing, there are two types- functional and automation. The functional side is evolving methodologies to deal with big bang and incremental enhancements.
Automation service providers who initially were aligned with the tool providers are evolving to be tool neutral, given the new tools coming in to the market. They are also creating design structures that would permit crashing of time for new engagements.
What kind of methodologies and processes do you employ to differentiate in the market?
The two principal markets that we address are products and the end user institutions. We handle these markets in the areas of banking, financial services and insurance verticals.
We have put in place a very strong system, process and tools (SPOT) that permits isolation of issues. In other words, the step-by-step process and their validation ensure that at every stage, there is sufficient control that ensures the quality and completeness of the step. This we have done through both automated processes and aligned manual review processes so that the quality can be ensured.
We have devised two separate processes to address the product and the end-user markets. We also have a horizontal practice in automation and we have developed a mapping program covering major tools so that people can move seamlessly from one tool to another with minimal re-training. This ensures considerable portability of our resources across tools.
We have developed curriculum that takes this process to our training centres and affiliated academies so that the resources are familiar with our proprietary processes.
Maveric started an MBA course is testing last year. How has the response been to this program?
We started a post-graduate program in software testing in financial services with Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA) in 2004. We have so far got four batches from this program. The fifth batch is scheduled to begin in January 2008. We have been receiving constant requests from other engineering colleges in south India to commence such a program with them. We have increased the batch size from 20 to 30 and from one batch a year to two.
Are you on the lookout for any acquisitions? Are you looking to expand into other areas within testing?
Our current medium-term plan extending till 2010-11 factors in inorganic growth in our markets in UK and US.
At present, we are a comprehensive service provider in testing. We are pre-dominantly in the areas of banking and capital markets. We are extending to the insurance domain from this year. On the geographic front, we are present in India, UK and parts of Middle East Asia. We have just entered US.
We are looking at expanding our practice in the US and exploring segments in Middle East Asia in the short term and extending to Asia Pacific in the medium term.