Accelerate the Application Lifecycle
with Integrated Virtual Resource Management
Surgient’s QA/Test Solution (formerly VQMS) enables enterprise development, test, and quality assurance (QA) organizations to accelerate the application lifecycle and reduce costs by centralizing pre-production infrastructure and automating the deployment, configuration and teardown of complex software environments. Leveraging Surgient’s unique policy-driven self-service model and proven virtualization technology from VMware and Microsoft, you can:
- Slash capital expenditures and server-to-staff ratios by consolidating infrastructure
- Maximize test automation investments by integrating for true end-to-end testing
- Focus on managing infrastructure, instead of repeatedly creating temporary replicas of production applications
- Maximize efficiency from a centralized lab supporting multiple and/or remote teams
- Boost productivity by eliminating time spent on setup and teardown of lab environments
- Reduce the costs of managing, deploying, and supporting software test configurations
- Eliminate critical software issues prior to deployment by testing in environments that closely match production configurations
Eliminate the #1 Testing Bottleneck
The biggest bottleneck in testing enterprise software today is the time and cost of setting up environments against which tests are run. In fact, the time spent provisioning test configurations can easily consume 50% or more of the total test cycle. The problem? The infrastructure required to support diverse testing needs and the manual processes employees perform to provision test configurations can’t keep pace with the growing complexity and rate-of-change of today’s software.
Surgient’s QA/Test Solution is an enterprise application that dramatically accelerates functional, configuration, and regression testing by automating the setup and teardown of test configurations 24x7. The result? Shorter test cycles, increased team productivity, broader test coverage and ultimately better software quality.
| Core Capability | What it Does | What Does it Mean to You |
|---|---|---|
| Centralized Test Lab Management | Allows test lab admins to centrally manage heterogeneous test infrastructure and test configs including the policies by which resources are allocated and consumed by multiple groups | Flexible and highly efficient approach for managing shared virtual infrastructure (VMware/ Microsoft) and multiple test configs saves you time and money |
| Automated Test Config Provisioning | Allows testers and automated scripts to safely reserve test lab capacity without conflicts and to provision test configs on a scheduled or on-demand basis with no manual intervention | Superior resource utilization means testing processes are consistently executed regardless of software complexity, the number of configs / testers, or the testing method |
| Secure Browser-Based Access | Allows testers to reliably request and securely access test configs 24x7 using a standard browser; firewall-friendly remote access technology supports RDP, ICA, VNC and native protocols | Ensures development and test personnel – in any location worldwide – can access test configs via a self-service portal without requiring access to the physical hosts |
| Capture and Restore | Allows testers and automated scripts to save and restore test configs (including results) without tying up valuable resources | Facilitates rapid collaboration between development and test teams to resolve defects without halting the testing process |
| Measurement and Reporting | Standard reports measure resource use; separate schema for rapid custom report development using 3rd-party SQL tools | Accurately track test resource and test config use for capacity planning, chargeback, and continuous improvement needs |
| Enterprise Readiness | Integrates with build, patch, and test management systems (including HP Quality Center™ and IBM Rational) via open APIs and CLI | Best-of-breed approach leverages and protects your investments in people, processes, and enterprise systems |
How it Works
With Surgient, IT and lab admins consolidate, pool, and centrally manage test infrastructure and configurations that are shared across multiple dev/test teams according to policies and SLAs. Leveraging proven virtualization technology, Surgient delivers as much as two to five times more testing capacity with your existing hardware resources, resulting in unmatched utilization. Developers and testers worldwide can reliably request and securely access test configurations which are automatically provisioned (24x7) – all from a self-service portal and without burdening IT. After testing, Surgient automatically tears down the configuration, making the resources immediately available for other testing needs. In addition, the entire state of a configuration can be easily saved and restored later for analysis.
Case Studies
Sisters of Mercy
Integrating Test Management with Industry ALM Tools
Surgient’s QA/Test Solution may also be used with leading test management tools to enable a true end-to-end solution for manual and automated testing. Using the provided APIs or command line interface (CLI), the test management tool or script directs the QA/Test Solution to provision a test config and return information about how to access it. Other software, such as a build or patch, may be manually or automatically installed onto the configuration until the environment reflects the required system under test. After the test run, Surgient can snapshot (save) the environment or immediately release the test resources. Parallel testing, where multiple configurations are deployed and tested at the same time until the entire test matrix has been executed, is also supported.
HP Quality Center
Leverage Surgient directly from HP Quality Center to manage and govern quality processes and automate software testing across your application environment.
Learn more about the tightly integrated solution between Surgient and HP Quality Center.
White Paper: Virtualization for Better, Faster, More Cost-Effective Quality Assurance.
IBM Rational Software
Manage the build & release and quality processes with integrated virtual resource management in IBM Rational BuildForge and the new Rational Quality Manager.
See how you can add virtual lab automation to your BuildForge implementation.