Every successful company collects data. This data is processed, analysed and transformed into information that creates real business value. Data has become a strategic asset for organisations around the word and needs to be harnessed in the right way. How valuable this data capital is depends on the quality of the software for data processing.

Through the digital transformation in the economy across all sectors, software is increasingly becoming a key success factor in daily operations. In today’s digital age, a growing amount of companies, even those where software development isn’t a focus, are striving for more efficient data processing. However, an off-the-shelf piece of software that caters for every business model and process simply doesn’t exist. Therefore, software must be adapted or developed, with many companies practising development in-house.

Software development, previously regarded as a pure IT issue, is increasing in importance and has become a business-critical task as a result of the digitisation of everyday business. It means speed and efficiency have become paramount. As business processes continue to change, the correct software that is implemented across an organisation has become even more important for competitive business operations.

The development and integration of new applications have to become more efficient, which more and more companies already recognise. But this knowledge also requires a willingness to rethink and move away from old models – and mottos like “as we have always done it”. A practical approach that exactly challenges this rethinking is DevOps.

Breathe new life into the IT department

DevOps breathes new life into the IT department – and creates a co-operation between the development team (Dev) and IT operations (Ops). It might sound straightforward but it’s a little more complex than that. It’s an approach to software development that strengthens communication, collaboration, integration and automation.

At the core of DevOps are four crucial elements: speed, quality, control and cost. Speed is fundamental to competitive execution and market positioning. Quality is vital to successful implementation and long-term viability. Control, the command of data use, security, access and process is crucial to safe operations. And cost, of course, is a pivotal consideration in nearly all business decisions.

With DevOps, previously separate teams are united in terms of a common goal with a more efficient process in place and faster production maturity of the software. Before, the two parties often had almost contradictory objectives: the development team was tasked to develop new applications as quickly as possible. For this purpose, large amounts of data copies were required. The IT operations team had to provide computing and storage resources for development, and then to integrate the new applications into the production system. The IT operations team was primarily concerned that the infrastructure is reliable and available, and that mission-critical data wasn’t compromised. As a result, quick actions according to the wishes of the developers were often not feasible. When you think about it, it’s no wonder why given two completely opposite missions – in turn, led to differing processes that overall run less efficiently.

A typical IT organisation has silo structures that are thwarting the full potential of agility, flexibility and speed. For example, in most companies, it may take hours, if not days or even weeks, to provide copies of large data volumes. For developers who need ongoing copies of production data for testing purposes, this represents a significant bottleneck and leads to the all too familiar tensions between development and operations.

To combat this issue, dummy data is often used in order to shorten the delivery time, but this may affect the quality of the applications. Since no full copy of the production environment is available, errors may go undetected, which then appear in the QA process or later in production. DevOps is a good approach to optimise processes such as those between development and operations. That said, DevOps can unfold its full potential only if copies of large data amounts can be provided rapidly and in best available quality.

Contemporary data management

To address this challenge, a modern and more efficient solution for data management is required. This solution should speed up the provisioning of data and minimise the dependence of the Dev team from the Ops team. This is where copy data virtualisation enters into the play.

This technology is based on a single ‘golden’ physical master copy of production data from which an unlimited number of virtual copies can be provisioned immediately. These virtual data copies are then available for a variety of use cases, not only for development and testing but also for backup, disaster recovery, data analytics, etc. without the need for separate ‘silos’ and systems for managing these silos. Multiple redundant physical copies of the same data that unnecessarily burdens memory resources and is responsible for the ‘flood of data’ can be avoided at the core.

With copy data virtualisation implemented, the operating team can even provide developers instant ‘self-service’ access to full-size virtual copies of production data. This results in better quality applications that are delivered more quickly. Developers no longer have to deal with bottlenecks in the provision of data and IT operations are no longer burdened with the complex deployment and management of physical copies of production data. Both parties are mutually engaged for the good of the business.

The growing importance of data and software

The integration of application development with the IT operation, according to the DevOps model, requires rethinking. Silos and separate processes must be dismantled to enable accelerated application development. Sleek data management, thanks to copy data virtualisation, fits perfectly into this concept, as information silos are eliminated in favour of simple and rapid data access.

Copy data virtualisation allows organisations to experience the full potential of DevOps. An efficient combination of business-driven rapid application development with high quality and fast, smooth business processes is realised. The key is intelligently managed virtual data. This in the future even more so, because data and software are becoming increasingly more important as the underlying infrastructure is becoming commoditised. With the rise of cloud and as-a-service offerings, infrastructure even must no longer be held in the own company.

DevOps is becoming a key part of IT planning for organisations globally, and if it hasn’t been employed yet, it will certainly be considered. What’s clear is that when combined with copy data virtualisation, it can be an incredibly powerful step towards changing the world of business when gaining a competitive advantage is critical.

Edited for web by Cecilia Rehn.

The post The need for DevOps and data virtualisation appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

The digital revolution is driving change in the software development and testing community. New processes, disciplines and the tumbling walls between silos mean tools are essential and the challenges of continuous delivery, DevOps regimes and shift-left are forcing testers to rethink how they test and where tools fit. The automation challenge has moved from selection and implementation of two or three tools for each discipline to selection and implementation of 20 or 30 tools for a project team using DevOps.

High volume of DevOps tools

Digital and DevOps are everywhere in the software blogs and media. Although DevOps is primarily a cultural change designed to reduce the delays in delivery and deployment, there is a focus on tools as an enabler. In principle, all of the processes to support continuous delivery are automated – now or at some point in the future. The tools required to provide this support include virtualisation and containerisation, source control, provisioning and of course, testing.

One key goal of digital is to continuously deploy to production to conduct experiments. The DevOps tools chain, as it is called, extends into production and includes logging, monitoring and analytics, so the range of tools required is much broader than we are used to. Nowadays, companies require twenty or so tools to be fully automated.

Tools to support digital programmes and DevOps.

But increasingly, requirements, story, release and task management and other collaborative tools are seen as part of the DevOps tools chain. The full tool chain might now have 30 tools. The schematic above attempts to place the tool types involved into a more meaningful structure.

The challenge of acquiring integrated tools chains is more complicated (and expensive) than before.

Curated listings of tools

Now, for as long as the web has existed, there have been websites that provide lists of references to tools that support for example, test automation. These web pages and sites have usually been set up by individuals, wishing to share their knowledge of software tools for their own communities. But it’s a burdensome task to create and maintain these lists. Vendors move webpages around, they rename tools, they merge and split tool functionality, they add new tools and new vendors and tools are popping up all the time. It’s really hard to maintain the accuracy of lists like these.

If you look around the various websites that provide such lists, this is what you tend to find:

• Listings do not provide much detail beyond simple categorisation, e.g. ‘Web’ or ‘Mobile’ test tools.
• Invariably, the lists are incomplete. Common tools are listed; less well-known tools are often missing.
• Most listings are dominated by proprietary tools. Open source tools are less well-represented, although some ‘free tools’ listings do exist, they are still incomplete.
• Many tools have functionality that spans multiple categories. Some are available in proprietary, some are open source and deployed on workstations, servers or SaaS platforms. Tools might be listed in multiple categories, but usually not.
• Tools listings often provide a link to a vendor web page and little else. Forums, training, supporting service companies or contractors are not usually listed and cannot be searched.
• Tools cannot be compared with respect to functionality, licensing, platforms or integrations.
• There are no tools usage statistics available; we have to rely on vendor marketing to gauge popularity.
• Not enough information, too much advertising.

The Tools Knowledge Base

The Tools Knowledge Base is a free-to-use service providing information on tools, vendors and the consultants and service companies that support them. It has been created by Gerrard Consulting working with TestOpera Limited and (among other features) provides:

• A searchable directory of over 2412 tools: Our focus is (broadly) DevOps, SDET and test activities. Each tool record stores limited data but links to the vendor or developer web page. This basic information and the content of the tools web page are downloaded and indexed nightly by our search engine.
• A sophisticated search engine: The search facility can be used to find tools using textual queries.
• A hierarchical tool type/features list: Every tool can be properly profiled and compared.
• Over 19,813 searchable blog posts: We download the content of blogs from over 300 bloggers each night. We do not store the blog posts, we provide a searchable index and link to the sources.
• Embeddable content: We offer a range of APIs allowing conferences, service companies and consultants to access and share our data on their own websites.

How do I use the Tools Knowledge Base? How is it kept up to date?

If you are tools user: we’d like you to register, and identify the tools you use. Your tools chain will appear on your profile. If a tool you use is not in TKB, then we invite you to create it. (If you want to embed the tools you use as a list in your website, there is an API for that).

If you are a tools expert or tools service provider: please see above, plus…we are looking for people who are knowledgeable enough to review or possibly edit the features listings for the tools you know well. The features hierarchy will grow and evolve over time – help us to perfect it. We will list you as a service provider on the tools you know best. It’s the least we can do.

If you are a tool vendor: we ask you to search for the tools you offer and check they are in the system and properly described. If your tools exist in the system and you want to manage the information we hold, that’s fine – we can make you the administrator (after a quick check on ownership). Alternatively, nominate a tools expert and we’ll invite them to keep your details correct. We can also maintain the data on your behalf.

If you own/contribute to an open source project: We make exactly the same offer as we make to the vendors. You are free to edit the information for your tools in the same way. You might already use GitHub, for example. We offer an extra publicity channel to reach a broader audience. People looking for tools often start their search with proprietary products and rarely see free tools listed side by side. Now is your chance.

If you are a blogger: Search for one of your recent blog posts and if you find it – your blog is already indexed in the system. If not, you can suggest the blog and register it yourself as long as it aligns with our scope (DevOps, testing and collaboration). Company blogs and general technology blogs are also acceptable. If your blog is indexed, let us know, and we will give you credit for it on your profile.

If you maintain your own online tools listing: please get in touch. We believe we already have more comprehensive listings than anyone else. We can provide ad-free, embeddable tool-type listings for your existing site. Join us as a partner and tools expert and help us to improve the data in our system to improve the value of your site. There are currently 183 tool type listings – all are available for free.

If you want a tools listing on your own site: Get in touch. We make the same offer as above. 

The Tools Knowledge Base is an attempt to help with the problem of tools research, evaluation and selection. We need your help as users, tool suppliers, developers and experts to make it the tools directory of choice for Digital projects and DevOps regimes.

Edited for web by Cecilia Rehn.

The post A tools directory for digital programmes and DevOps regimes appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

Fuelled in part by shifts in customer demand and in part by rapidly changing technology, some software application vendors are poised to reap windfall profits from the new software pricing and licensing models emerging, while others risk being left behind.

This is the conclusion of a new report published by Flexera Software.

Key report findings

Among the report’s findings:

Perpetual decline

Only 43% of software vendors say perpetual software licenses contribute to half or more of their revenues. Historically, the perpetual license was the dominant licensing model used by most software vendors.

Shifting foundations

70% of software vendors will change their pricing and licensing models within the next two years. The reasons? To generate more revenues, be more competitive and improve customer relations.

No installation required

36% of software vendors say that less than half of their applications are delivered as traditional installed software.

Change ready

Within the next two years software vendors plan on changing their licensing policies to accommodate new technologies like:

• Cloud (49%).
• SaaS (46%).
• Virtualisation (47%).
• Mobile platforms (55%).

Bliss or ignorance?

73% of vendors boast their pricing and licensing policies are effective. Yet despite this confidence, 51% of those surveyed admitted they don’t track customer usage, 45% don’t audit customer usage, 55% don’t have technology in place to track customer usage of their products, and 42% say their customers have challenges determining which software products they’re entitled to use.

Proactive enterprise software vendors

“Enterprises are rapidly redefining how they want to license and pay for business software. Moreover, technology is shifting so rapidly it is rendering old pricing and licensing models obsolete,” said R “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst & Founder at Constellation Research. “Smart software producers are being proactive, viewing this dramatic shift as an opportunity to offer more flexible monetisation models, capture market share and new revenue streams. Software vendors that fail to act risk being left behind.”

“The report illustrates the fluidity of the software market place and the rapidly changing customer preferences dictating how software is bought and sold,” said Steve Schmidt, Vice President of Corporate Development at Flexera Software. “To thrive in this environment software vendors must adopt an agile Software Monetisation strategy and implement automation that flexibly supports multiple software pricing and licensing models. As the data suggests, many vendors are not yet ‘change-ready,’ and therefore are at risk.”

Edited from press release by Cecilia Rehn.

The post Enterprise software market software pricing and licensing trends appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

Read on for more coverage on: agile testing; virtualisation; security testing and a supplier profile on newly-branded Ten10. We hope you enjoy this issue!

Click here to read TEST Magazine online

Editor picks

The Legacy of Testing

The Financial Conduct Authority regulates 56,000 financial services firms and financial markets in the UK. TEST Magazine spent some time to learn about the importance of stakeholder communications and what the legacy of testing is.

A New Model of Manufacturing

Colin Bull, Principal Consultant Manufacturing and Product Development, SQS, examines the great digitalisation of the manufacturing industry.

Finding Bugs through Psychoanalysis

A developer’s psychology can play a large role in finding defects. Faisal Qureshi, QA Engineer, Amazon, reveals how testers can leverage developer psychology.

About TEST Magazine

TEST Magazine was specifically created as a voice for the modern-day software testing and quality assurance professional. Launched in 2008 and distributed to an audience over 14,000, the publication provides news, features and practical, as well as professional, advice on all facets of software testing. TEST Magazine is widely regarded as the leading journal for software testing and quality assurance in Europe and beyond.

Written by Cecilia Rehn.

The post Latest issue of TEST Magazine is now available online appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

Challenging shift to agile

Financial institutions are transitioning their application development methodology towards agile with the aim of releasing applications and upgrades at a faster pace to ensure end-customer satisfaction. However, this shift to agile is a challenging process and there is much need and scope for innovation in implementing agile for business applications. Maveric Systems recognised this trend in the banking sector and is geared towards enabling banks with an assured quality application through an integrated DevOps approach. As part of these offerings, service virtualisation is a very integral component that will reduce the go-to-market period, increase the scope of automation, and cope with subsequent product/version releases with minimal change.

Service virtualisation an integral component

“CA Technologies’ service virtualisation platform is an acclaimed industry-standard automation tool widely used by most financial institutions globally. By adopting this platform, Maveric’s domain and assurance capabilities will be combined with the platform’s competencies. We aim to create domain-specific solutions that can be customised to specific institutions’ needs, help increase the scope of automation while investing minimal time, effort & cost, and thereby enhance the quality of core assurance function”, Venkatesh P, Co-founder and Director – Platforms and Solutions, Maveric Systems said.

There are several constraints involved during a software development lifecycle and service virtualisation helps in making the process seamless by eliminating these constraints. The most significant step that service virtualisation helps achieve, is to start the process of testing from the very beginning of the development lifecycle, thereby enabling OpEx & CapEx reduction, parallel development and testing, infrastructure requirement reduction, and elimination of costs for third-party services.

Imperative for financial institutions to stay agile

“Today’s dynamic business environment demands financial institutions to stay agile to address customers’ demands, help manage risk and be compliant. As a result, it is imperative for financial institutions to deliver higher quality applications with a faster go-to-market approach. By adopting the virtualisation platform, Maveric will work towards offering solutions that can meet these challenges – especially in testing – which has always been a big bottleneck in the entire development lifecycle. CA Service Virtualization will help to eliminate constraints, thereby optimising the software development lifecycle.” said Ashok Vasan, Vice President, Application Delivery, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies.

Edited from press release by Cecilia Rehn.

The post New service virtualisation platform offering appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

It might seem like a cliché that testing and quality assurance (QA) have moved away from being a reactive pursuit. But it is definitively important to reiterate and reinforce that the philosophy of testing today is unequivocally proactive. Whether it be in the use of tools and methodologies, or in testing consumption patterns, QA organisations are now involved right at the outset of the product’s (or services’) lifecycle in assuring end user satisfaction and fulfilment.

The shift in focus on customer experience has led to a fundamental change in the delivery of products and services. Digitisation has become the norm. Brands are being consumed in many different digital guises with omni-channel at the forefront of such consumption. Using this new knowledge of how products and services are consumed, QA specialists are simultaneously engineering to deliver to product quality and a fulfilling experience. Customer feedback and sentiment has, in fact, become critical in deciding on the ‘official’ version of the product. Assurance now means considering the customer’s experience from the beginning.

It sounds controversial, and perhaps a little preservationist, but without this evolution to the modern proactive assurance model, there would be no marketplace left for testing alone. There simply isn’t room for forces that slow down delivery today. Gone are the days when the QA focus was merely on preserving KPIs!

Therefore, as we see speed to market growing in influence, we find assurance specialists innovating and keeping pace; which is why it’s all about the business impact and the customer experience now. And powering these imperatives is a complete reimagination of QA – intelligent automation, agile assurance, DevOps, and a whole new generation of QA tools and frameworks.

It is with this backdrop that we can discuss the innovations in the assurance sphere. While the term innovation means many different things to different stakeholders, this article will summarise some key assurance innovations from process, tool and people perspectives.

Shifting left the right way

The most talked about concept in testing in recent times – shift left – is also the most important innovation in quality assurance. There has been a huge change in attitude towards and within testing through the adoption of this trend. It has had a far reaching impact not only on the time taken for testing, but it has also helped bring down costs, increase overall quality through early detection and fixing, and helped breathe life into rapid release cycles (which are critical for a number of businesses today).

On the face of it, shift left is a fairly straightforward process change. But just like most ideas, it is deceptively simple to understand, yet gloriously difficult to execute. While it espouses early performance testing and more unit testing, it requires the right combination of business, development and testing knowledge. Which is why most QA folks do not shift left the right way!

Under the hood structural quality

Another innovation in testing has been the introduction of structural quality, which has contributed immensely to optimisation in cost of quality. By analysing the cracks prevalent in the code itself, testing and assurance have taken on a proactive role at the building block level, carrying out pre-emptive checks and fixing problems even before they can arise. Structural quality assurance has aided in acceleration and velocity of production in a big way. Today, there are plenty of tools in the market which help QA organisations look for structural anomalies in the existing ecosystem.

Velocity-wise service virtualisation and intelligent testing

Two of the most exciting innovations have been that of service virtualisation and intelligent testing. Through the power of virtualisation, QA organisations can carry out end-to-end testing, without the erstwhile need to wait for someone or a system to process the request on the assembly line. Service virtualisation has enabled a greater number of testing cycles to run in the same amount of time. It has ensured that testing and QA are no longer obstacles or impediments to business.

When meeting today’s speed to market demands, this aid to acceleration has been a vital innovation, along with the evolution of intelligent testing. New automated tools have completely reimagined the way QA organisations provision test data and how they handle test analysis. With elements of automated test bed preparation, self-generating and self-rectifying test scenarios from requirements, completely independent test data and test case preparation and of course, rapid test execution, intelligent testing systems are all set to become the norm.

The two together have increased test coverage considerably and have helped secure a lifelike production environment. They are assisting assurance professionals in safeguarding quality with much more accuracy than ever before.

The DevOps continuum

The most recent development in the QA arena has been that of DevOps. Adding a whole new dimension to ‘shift left’, DevOps takes the concept to an entirely different plane. It not only has an impact on the QA organisation, but to ensure maximum gain, needs to envelop the entire IT organisation as well. The potential of this innovation in process and people aspects is gaining ground.

The assurance people tree

And now, perhaps the most under rated development in testing: the way in which assurance professionals have reinvented themselves. From rapid skilling beyond traditional testing methods to equipping themselves to cope with the need for agile methods in delivering to the contours of quality and speed to market, assurance professionals have redefined what it means to be in QA. The shift isn’t just in the development lifecycle; it is a shift in mind set as well – from reactive to proactive, from detection to prevention, from manual to automated, from bugs to business! Multi-disciplinary teams with techno-functional expertise and skills around assuring customer experience are being created. And a career of choice in this discipline is seen as a viable proposition for many engineers.

Future of assurance innovation

Looking ahead, it is clear that a wide world of possible innovation awaits us all. There is disruption in the air, from new products, new emerging industries and new ways of thinking about assurance. Robotics has become more mainstream, and when you consider the world of smart devices, wearables and the internet of things (IoT), we’re seeing a different ball game altogether. Whether you’re dealing with products that are worn on human bodies, or smart technologies inside the private sphere, there is opportunity for testing and QA to innovate.

It is already at a stage where it is no longer just about assurance for requirements, design, test cases and test data. It is now getting into the realm of virtual reality with more simulations of real life scenarios taking place. Cognitive and behavioural sciences too, along with hardware, software and firmware are coming together to create the most optimum testing arena for the best consumer experience.

The future will also see a change in how we deliver solutions. Cloud services have become popular, and will become the default. Brands and consumers alike will expect no delay in delivery, and the first time right mentality will prevail.

Changes across the different market sectors

As the future looms, we see varied patterns in different market and industry segments. By approaching assurance as a business unit, you get to see both sides of the coin. At TCS we can analyse and evaluate both the similarities and differences in the markets.

There is already a lot of development in the omni-channel space, which offers significant opportunities for brands in the retail and banking sectors. We are seeing a change in how these companies and e-Commerce sites are connecting with different demographics of consumers, and taking full advantage of digitisation and cloud technology. By using predictive analytics, the omni-channel environment can successfully implement forces such as focused advertising, instant social feedback, cross selling and upselling.

In the insurance industry the advent of IoT will have massive repercussions. There will be new product considerations out there, and new ways of dynamically computing insurance calculations. For insurance companies, IoT offers sophisticated ways for real-time claims settlement and a direct link between the insurer and the consumer. This new direct channel will lead to a whole host of exciting opportunities.

The healthcare and wellness sector will also be radically changed in the coming years, as more digital technology is brought in. Regulatory and compliance challenges will ensue, but once taken care of, a new revolution in personal individual healthcare will progress. Digital devices will connect consumers to medical professionals, and metrics and data can be used in everything from calculating personalised tariffs to increasing incentive programmes.

In the telecoms/media/entertainment sector one key change is the mass adoption of digitalised consumer content. We’re already seeing the vast popularity of streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify. This new business model of leasing content to consumers while selling metrics, patterns and analytics directly to advertisers will continue to disrupt the more traditional entertainment industry.

What’s the role of assurance in all this?

Certainly it’s not about test cases and test defects and experience alone. Instead, as the value chain across different industries is being reimagined, the role of assurance will be to ensure that the integrity of this value chain is preserved. Assurance is about making sure there is no dilution in terms of dissemination of information flow from consumer to company.

There is a need for stronger advocacy for the usage of assurance, and to continually push these best practices to the market. A few IT firms recognised early on that while testing was always going to be necessary, today’s fast pace and changing user consumption patterns mean that ‘checklist’ testing or any form of QA that could be considered a hindrance or slowing down of product development and release was going to fall out of fashion, quickly.

Conclusion

The practice of quality assurance lies at the convergence of what the brand wants and what the consumer wants. And it will only get more important as future technology gets developed and more areas of our lives become digitised. Technology disruptions in the future promise complexity for those who want to avoid it and opportunity for those who embrace it. It is important to stay grounded and to listen to the market forces around us.

The post Staying Ahead of the Game: The Future of Innovation appeared first on DevOps Online North America.