By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
November 24, 2009

SINGAPORE – Two partner firms are pushing for the automation of system tests among IT service providers and device manufacturers to speed up service deployment as well as time to market (TTM) of products.

The two companies Spirent Communications and software solutions firm Fanfare, declared that “the time is ripe” for companies to automate their manual product testing tasks, which they described not only as “soul crushing work” for expert employees but is also costly and hurtful for TTM targets.

“Today, testing teams are over five times larger than they were 15 years ago and testing costs are around 12 times higher, while laboratory utilization is dropping,” said Spirent director Angus Robertson in the recent NetEvents Asia-Pacific Press (APAC) summit.

Robertson said what Spirant and Fanfare offer is world class test automation for device and system testing designed to drive return on investment (ROI) up and total cost of ownership (TCO) down.

Fanfare’s vice president for marketing David Gehringer told the press that automation of testing systems is a must, claiming devices are now getting more complex. He added that automation from some case studies showed there are “no more redos” and it reduces a product’s TTM by 50%.

“TTM is the common business layer behind the applications business, getting the product to the market fast,” Gehringer said.

Gehringer dubbed manual work for testing teams as “mundane” which often affects the career drive of experts. “A good example is an engineer doing routines on cabling which is a soul crushing work,” he said. “Other manual things are configurations, the checking, daily log in and many others that affect their being productive to the things they are really expert in.”

However, Gehringer noted the technology will not replace jobs of people. Instead, there would be a shift of expertise – from better in manual into better in automating.

“The technology is to speed up testing and not to cut on people. The truth is companies just can’t get enough competent people to do the expertise in test systems,” he said.

Both executives said Spirant and Fanfare’s recent partnership and product integration have enabled a popular service provider to increase in quality control and testing by over 100%; team productivity up by 70%; and TTM reduced by 25%.

Robertson said Fanfare’s expertise is focused on automation, while Spirant’s forte is on the testing equipments.

Gehringer said the global market for automation of testing systems is pegged at US$5 billion at present. “There is about US$2 billion market in Asia and still growing. We have about 30% shares of the automating market in Asia.”

Among the platforms of manual testing that needs automation, Gehringer said, include the Web, video, voice, fiber, Ethernet, among others.

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