Software testing has become one of the fastest-growing areas of corporate IT expenditure, and major changes are taking place in the commercial and delivery models, tool sets and skills requirements as the sector reaches a new level of maturity.

Software testing has emerged as one of the fastest-growing areas of the IT market, according to a new report from Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC), Worldwide Testing Services Market 2010-2014: Key Growth opportunities & Sector Trends. The report found that global spending on testing software and services is currently out-stripping overall IT expenditure, and will continue to grow at a CAGR of 5.2 percent over the next four years.

Worldwide spending on testing (including both internal and external testing skills, tools and related hardware and systems) will reach approximately Euro 79bn in 2010, and will near the Euro 100bn mark in 2014. Testing is also becoming one of the strongest areas of recruitment in the IT sector, and PAC estimates that there are now more than 100,000 professional testers worldwide.

In the past, testing has often been overlooked in terms of its importance to the business as well as its contribution to annual IT costs.  At many organisations it has often been the developers that perform testing over the course of a project, which meant that the true cost of testing is often buried within the overall development budget, and testing rigour is sacrificed in order to meet release deadlines. 

But two factors have helped drive it up the list of priorities for IT decision-makers: the renewed pressure on IT to contribute to company-wide cost reduction programmes in the shadow of the economic slowdown, and a greater appreciation of what the cost of unsuccessful, insufficient or misdirected testing can be to their business. This has been highlighted by recent high-profile system failures at the London Stock Exchange, the US Aviation Commission and the State of Queensland.

“Businesses are increasingly looking to use external skills, in order to leverage suppliers’ greater economies of scale, gain access to lower-cost offshore skills and investment in tools and processes, and to support their increasingly complex technology landscapes,” commented Nick Mayes, senior analyst at PAC.

The report also identifies a number of high-growth niches within the testing market, including SAP and Oracle testing, managed testing services, application security testing and cloud-based testing.

 “We had no doubt that the software testing sector is one of the fasting growing areas of the IT market. The recession and continuing IT project budget cuts are pivotal in driving this strong growth,” added Rudolf van Megen, CEO of independent software testing services company SQS. “Testing of IT systems to ensure quality is essential if you want to avoid expensive surprises when systems go into live operation. This is particularly important where an external supplier is involved; software can be very complex and independent testing is one of the best ways of establishing confidence that the system will behave in the way that you’re expecting it to. Effective use of testing helps to cut costs and early engagement with projects helps testers to spot potential issues before they become expensive defects.”

 www.pac-online.com

Business machine sales were outperformed by the consumer market, with sales of notebooks and all-in-one desktop PCs leading the way. Gartner says this market has been affected by the economic conditions and unit price increases, with companies attempting to drive down costs as part of their recession planning.

While there are encouraging signs across Western Europe as a whole, the UK has been the weakest of the markets in Western Europe. “Given the UK market was also the weakest in the downturn, its recovery had been much more muted,” comments Atwal. “There is no doubt that the introduction of austerity measures in the UK has hindered any anticipated improvement in the underlying demand for PCs. We don’t expect this to change for the rest of 2010. As businesses and consumers come to terms with the potential impact of the government measures, caution is certainly the keyword across all IT markets and the PC market is currently no different.”

http://www.gartner.com/

Apple will stake out a dominant position in the tablet market in the coming years, according to a report from research firm iSuppli. The report states that the Apple tablet could claim as much as three quarters of all tablet sales this year and continue to carry the top spot in the market into 2012.

iSuppli analysts predict the iPad will dominate the market in the same way that Apple’s iPhone has in the smartphone market. It sees Apple setting a benchmark with iPad that will send competitors back to their drawing boards. “Although the iPad has been on the market for only a few months, powerful interests throughout the technology business are devoting enormous resources to challenge and topple Apple’s domination in this fast-growing marketplace,” comments iSuppli monitor research director Rhoda Alexander. “However, if recent history is any lesson, it will take some time for these companies to get their products to market, longer for them to offer necessary software support and infrastructure, and an even lengthier period to begin to rival the overall user experience Apple is able to deliver.”

Elsewhere, a report in the Daily Telegraph claims that sumo wrestlers in Japan have been given iPads because their fingers are too fat to use a standard mobile phone. It may come as a shock that the highly traditional Japanese sportsmen are choosing a device made by ‘foreign devils’, but sumo association chief Hanaregoma commented: “It seems rather easy to use. Sending emails was very easy. But time flies if you play with this.”

SQS is advising testing professionals, currently working through ISEB’s Software Testing Practitioner accreditation, to sign up to final courses before the scheme ends in early 2011. The recommendation follows the announcement that the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, has signed an agreement with the UK Testing Board (UKTB), resulting in ISTQB Advanced becoming their preferred software testing accreditation from March 2011.

“Many people still seem to be unclear about the impact of the BCS/UKTB contract and the options open to them now that the ISEB Practitioner qualification is being withdrawn,” explains Steve Dennis, SQS UK training director. “There are currently thousands of people participating in the scheme who need to understand the implications so that they can make a decision on the best way to move forward.”

For those who have started down the ISEB scheme, by passing Foundation and Intermediate qualifications, a move across to the ISTQB Advanced scheme would require five days of training, instead of the three-day ISEB Practitioner training. This is longer and will be more expensive than completing the ISEB Path.

“By completing their Practitioner qualification before March 2011, professionals will save time and money,” rationalises Dennis.  “The ISEB scheme will still remain internationally recognised, the certification does not expire and it’s our understanding they will not be precluded from continuing down the ISTQB scheme at Expert level when this becomes available. So there is still great value in completing the ISEB scheme.

“We have had a single scheme at Foundation level for several years which has been jointly branded by ISEB and ISTQB. SQS welcomes the consolidation on to the ISTQB Certified Tester Advanced scheme as it will provide a single international qualification, recognised in 47 countries, and a more clearly defined career path for the industry for the longer term.”

The main options open to software testing professionals are currently:

For professionals with the ISEB/ISTQB Foundation qualification:

- Take ISEB Intermediate and ISEB Practitioner by March 2011, or

- Move straight to ISTQB Advanced Scheme and choose from three paths: Test Manager, Test Analyst or Technical Test Analyst.

For professionals with the ISEB Foundation and Intermediate qualifications:

- Take ISEB Practitioner Scheme before March 2011 to save time and money; about £1000 compared with £1500 and three-day versus a five-day course

For professionals with one ISEB Practitioner (Test Manager or Test Analyst) Qualification:

- Aim for another Practitioner Qualification if you can complete before March 2011.

Commenting on the acquisition, Sashi Reddi, founder and chairman of AppLabs said, “We are delighted to make this significant acquisition at a time when our customers are looking to us to provide thought leadership in the testing space. This is a strategic move to broaden our proprietary and open source tools so that we can provide our customers with solutions that leverage the best productivity enhancement techniques out there to drive value and quality in every project we undertake. ValueMinds would bring to the table not only some key customised tools like WS TestersDesk – a test case generator for SOA/web services and Record Generator – a test data creator for databases and performance testing, but will also demonstrate AppLabs’ thought leadership in community driven testing activities”  .

With the acquisition, Ashwin Palaparthi, founder/chief architect of ValueMinds will join AppLabs as the vice president innovation and will run several key initiatives for the company such as its Centers of Excellence in test automation, performance testing, and security testing.

“With customers demanding innovation from their service providers, this is an opportune time for ValueMinds to combine its innovative tools and IP with AppLabs, the leader in testing services,” said Palaparthi. “We will continue to innovate from within AppLabs to create additional tools to enhance productivity, and provide many of these for free on TestersDesk.com to support the testing community out there.”

www.applabs.com

 End users of software have an expanding number of choices, and user experience is an increasingly important factor for developers to understand to maintain competitive advantage. The introduction of Agile development methods has had a disruptive effect on design and usability efforts. Userlytics now provides a way to collect usability feedback at a depth and speed that keeps pace with Agile teams. The solution is fast, flexible and affordable.

 “With a tester goal designed to take no more than ten minutes it is easy to review the results – in fact, it is almost like having them sitting there in your office” states Dan Richards, product development director at Userlytics. “The reports and recordings are powerful tools to get designers, developers and stakeholders to reach common understanding of user experience issues. Userlytics requires no site instrumentation in order to complete a test. In fact, the site or software application does not have to be functional. Userlytics works well for testing posted wireframes or low fidelity prototypes. The service requires a functioning URL, or even a wireframe / low fidelity prototype that can be hosted on our secure servers.”

Tests are conducted remotely. Prototypes, production web sites, web-based applications and even competitor’s offerings can all be evaluated. Building a test is easy says the company, even for clients who have no prior experience with usability testing. Select from a wide range of sample tasks and questions or create your own.

“A best practice of a minimum of five testers is implemented by the service, and you can select from our panel of testers, or provide your own,” says Userlytics. “Tests are completed in the testers’ natural environment, at locations across the US and UK. Choosing Userlytics testers allows you to select pertinent demographics ensuring you have the correct mix of responses. However you choose your test participants, the invitations, tester incentives, and quality control are all handled by Userlytics making the process simple, quick and safe.”

Initial results are often available within one to two hours, while completed tests are ready in most cases in less than 48 hours. Your personal dashboard can be viewed as the results come in, or you can wait until all the testers have completed their tasks. This quick turnaround enables you to have real user feedback in time to make critical decisions, regardless of development method or time constraints.

www.userlytics.com

“The new SilkTest 2010 automated testing product release enables users to rapidly create test automation, ensuring continuous validation of quality throughout the development lifecycle. SilkTest’s support for automating Web 2.0 applications enables clients to move away from software life cycles dominated by manual testing to those where automated tests continually test software for quality and increase their time to market by as much as 30 percent,” says Micro Focus.

New in SilkTest 2010 are several test automation user interfaces (UIs), delivering test automation to the entire software delivery team. These include:

•             A codeless, storyboard-based testing UI designed to enable less technical users to create test automations. By working with screen-based storyboards business analysts, quality managers and other non-developers can easily create and run tests. 

•             Silk4Net, a UI option that seamlessly extends the capabilities of SilkTest by plugging directly into Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, and Silk4J, which plugs into Eclipse environments. Together, these enable Java or .NET developers to easily create new automated tests in their native programming language.

•             Advanced open agent technology, an automation engine shared by all SilkTest UIs that creates much simpler and more powerful test scripts that require very little script maintenance. The open agent’s easy-to-maintain scripts are powered by technology that provides automatic synchronization for testing AJAX and Web 2.0 applications, allowing customers to test applications across different web browsers using a single script.

“We’ve been using SilkTest for more than eight years to test literally millions of combinations of end-user interactions, product versions and different types of phone equipment,” comments Karl Wagner, manager of software design at Mitel, a leading provider of unified communications software solutions. “SilkTest is an indispensable part of our delivery environment and a key reason we are able to get to market very quickly with a variety of quality products. The latest version of SilkTest will give us the ability to test our telephony solutions from end to end, involving team members at various levels. SilkTest’s multiple user experiences for different roles will help us push testing more upstream in the product lifecycle and in the long term give us even faster time to market and higher ROI.”

According to Micro Focus, SilkCentral Test Manager 2010 is the only test management tool to provide a unified framework for managing quality for either Agile or traditional projects. It delivers continuous visibility and control over all types of quality processes by integrating with existing test frameworks, tools and assets. SilkCentral Test Manager 2010 has a range of new capabilities that the company says dramatically reduce waste in the software delivery process, including:

•             Integration with the Micro Focus’ Caliber product family to create the next-generation of requirements-driven testing. By defining requirements with Caliber’s advanced requirements definition and using those requirements to generate and synchronize with SilkCentral test cases, customers ensure their quality practices are responsive to software change to continually validate that software meets business expectations.

•             Integration with Microsoft’s Visual Studio defect tracking and source control for versioning test assets, further extending SilkCentral’s industry-leading capabilities to provide customers with visibility and control over software delivery environments.

•             Shared manual test libraries and manual test versioning, enabling software delivery teams to be more efficient with manual testing, improve visibility and control over changes to manual tests, and re-use common elements of manual tests.

“SilkTest 2010 and SilkCentral Test Manager 2010 not only prevent defects that arise with poor synchronization of requirements and quality but allow organisations to dramatically increase their levels of automated testing,” said Rich Novak, president and general manager of the Micro Focus Application Management and Quality Division. “This CQA approach enables customers to truly optimise their software development lifecycle, delivering more rapid time to market, improved project success rates and a significant reduction in waste due to inefficient testing processes.”

www.microfocus.com/products/silk/silktest/index.aspx

Comparing the week before and after the match, the site saw an 18 percent increase in natural traffic, and a 10 percent rise in total site visits. Did the World Cup distract IT pros from their job searches? Or did they choose to just put their hunting on hold?

When it came to the all important CVs, there was a 20 percent increase in new CVs being uploaded to the site, and 25 percent of existing documents were updated.

Alex Farrell, managing director of The IT Job Board, commented: “Looking at the stats, it seems the World Cup acted as a real distraction from UK job searching; with the IT sector proving to be no exception. “Our recent World Cup survey highlighted tournament fever was failing to distract UK IT departments, but this doesn’t seem to be the case when it comes to IT pros’ job searches. Since the Germany match, The IT Job Board has seen a real increase in site visits, and in the number of CVs being uploaded and updated online. Perhaps an early bath for the team has stimulated movement in a traditionally sluggish summer period.”

An increase in deployment of agile IT delivery in applications was also identified, with more than 60 percent of  respondents expecting to use agile development methods to deliver apps in the coming year.

Seventy one percent of respondents said that they are investing in new application development projects, but there has been a shift in focus of IT projects from daily operational focus to building new applications that are focused on competitive advantage.

According to the report, organisations are increasingly turning to agile and cloud based delivery methods to modernize their applications. Benefits cited include cost reduction (50 percent), increased agility (33 percent) and improved time to market (14 percent) for cloud computing. Time to market (37 percent), quality of application (26 percent), resource utilization (23 percent) and cost savings (14 percent) were cited as the main benefits of agile IT delivery.

“As organisations develop web applications that will be used by many thousands of users worldwide, traditional load testing methods have fallen short” says the company. “These methods require far too much hardware and are not able to scale to meet the demands of today’s web applications. SilkPerformer CloudBurst utilises 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.

“There are considerable benefits to a hybrid approach for testing as a service that incorporates both worlds – having on-premise controllers for SaaS testing provides ease of access to monitoring applications and to performance data on ‘the cloud’,” said Melinda Ballou, program director of IDC’s Application Life-Cycle Management service. “Also, a licensing model that lets users mix and match both permanent on-premise and adaptive SaaS solutions enables flexible licensing and adoption strategies at a time when companies remain resource constrained.”

In order to handle the complexity of today’s Web 2.0 applications, SilkPerformer CloudBurst also delivers a new generation of load-generation technology called Browser Driven Load Testing, which cuts scripting and script maintenance time in half and more accurately emulates end user loads on Web 2.0 applications.

“CloudBurst’s approach to leverage the cloud gives our customers the advantage of being able to load test and analyze the performance of all of their applications whether they are Internet-facing or internal and mix-and-match permanent or consumption-based licensing models to meet their needs,” said Rich Novak, president and general manager of the Micro Focus Application Management and Quality Division. “SilkPerformer CloudBurst allows us to help customers drive Continuous Quality Assurance methods in terms of performance testing. The ability to test from anywhere to anywhere and to easily and quickly harness the resources needed to drive loads allows performance testing to be accomplished earlier in the life cycles and leveraged more often. That is what Micro Focus’ Continuous Quality Assurance is all about, eliminating defects earlier in the development lifecycle at less cost.”

www.microfocus.com/cloudburst