Webinar: Power Up Application Testing with Virtual Labs

Surgient and Utopia Solutions will jointly present a webinar on accelerating software delivery with test automation and test lab management.

What: “Power Up Your Application Testing – Accelerate Software Delivery with Test Automation and Test Lab Management”

When: Wednesday, November 28 2007, 11a PT (2p ET)

Speakers: Lee Barnes, founder and CTO, Utopia Solutions and Erik Josowitz, VP Product Strategy, Surgient

Register: https://surgientevents.webex.com/surgientevents/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=666451502

SD Times – Automating the Virtual Testing Lab for Fun and Profit

Nice article in current SDTimes discussing a recent survey by voke, inc. (see previous blog posts by Theresa Lanowitz) that demonstrates that virtual labs used in the context of software testing (think regression tests, configuration tests, user acceptance tests, etc) can reduce test cycle time by up to 50%.

SD Times – Automating the Virtual Testing Lab for Fun and Profit

Surgient VQMS Integrated Into HP Quality Center

HP announced that they are selling Surgient VQMS as part of HP Quality Center, to automate test environment provisioning

Surgient > News > Surgient VQMS Integrated Into HP Quality Center

Surgient Announces Next Version of Leading Virtual Lab Management Solutions

Surgient announced the upcoming availability of Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications version 5.3. The latest release extends Surgient’s enterprise virtual lab leadership by enabling the support of a wide-array of guest operating systems, 64-bit guest and host environments and advanced complex networking scenarios. Large organizations have indicated the need for these capabilities as they extend their use of virtual labs beyond individual projects and groups.

Surgient > News > Surgient Announces Next Version of Leading Virtual Lab Management Solutions

Virtualization of QA Testing Speeds ERP Deployment at Mercy — Digital Healthcare and Productivity

Nice case study of Surgient virtual QA lab in use at Sisters of Mercy Health Systems. Using the Surgient virtual lab environment as part of an ERP rollout is saving tremendous time, they say–

Using the Surgient VQMS, the group can now run through 100 applications in a week with two people involved.

At the start of the ERP deployment, it was estimated that it would take six years of testing time to complete the QA testing. Now, Gutsche’s group thinks it will be closer to six months. “Previously, it took at least a week to run a level two test, now it takes about four hours,” said Gutsche. “This allows us to get to level three testing faster.”

Virtualization of QA Testing Speeds ERP Deployment at Mercy — Digital Healthcare and Productivity

What’s Next?

Theresa Lanowitz, analyst with Voke, notes some of the benefits of virtualization and virtual lab management in support of outsourcing or offshoring in her “What’s Next?” blog. She says:

Virtualization technology delivers so much to an enterprise. First and foremost, it allows for a malleable enterprise environment to be delivered anywhere independent of an operating system.

The benefits of virtualization abound in a variety of use cases, but while I am talking about technology going together like David Cassidy and puka shells, offshore work is exponentially easier and far more predictable when using virtualization technology. Two of the more popular vendors offering virtual lab automation technology specifically for the application lifecycle are Surgient and VMware.

What’s Next?

Virtual labs and offshoring/outsourcing

Akshay Upadhye writes on the Sandhill.com site about mitigating risks in offshoring and outsourcing. Specifically he talks about different types of risks – organizational, environmental,  etc. Virtual labs can be a great tools for mitigating the risks in outsourcing or offshoring. By providing remote access to virtual labs to the outsourced teams no intellectual property needs to be transferred to a remote country and be subject to its rules. Much finer-grained access control can be provided in a virtual lab environment than can be counted on from an outsourcing provider. Virtual labs would also facilitate the hand-off of work between a remote team and an onshore team (24/7 development or follow-the-sun testing scenarios).

SandHill.com | Engineering | Best Practices: Offshoring & Outsourcing
Akshay Upadhye

Virtually Developed, Debugged, And Deployed

More on VMware Lab Manager

Virtually Developed, Debugged, And Deployed

VMware Lab Manager 2.5 Reaches Public Beta

David Marshall at InfoWorld notes the release of the latest beta of VMware Lab Manager

InfoWorld Virtualization Report | InfoWorld | VMware Lab Manager 2.5 Reaches Public Beta | April 24, 2007 04:07 PM | By David Marshall