Welcome

Dear Friends:

As we reflect upon our notable progress in the second quarter, we realize that it is a testament to our ability to meet the needs of our customers worldwide. In this regard, our Test Center of Excellence (TCoE) has been playing a pivotal role. AppLabs has been a pioneer and thought leader in TCoE model. Today, AppLabs leverages its proprietary SCORE framework and TCoE that help realization of our customer goals much faster than the traditional discreet testing thereby reducing time to market and overall costs.

AppLabs has developed its standardization-centralization-optimization-review and expand (SCORE) methodology. The methodology integrates a number of methodologies e.g. test process improvement methodologies such as TMMi and TPI. It is based on assessing the current maturity of the customer in terms of testing and creating an improvement roadmap based on SCORE. SCORE is typically used as part of our TCoEs contracts. In this issue of Perspective the featured case studies includes our TCoE engagements at Farmers Insurance and Friends Provident.

Industry analysts continued endorsing AppLabs. The company was featured in reports or presentations by leading analysts - Forrester, Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC), NelsonHall and IDC. NelsonHall in its report on Software Testing Services continued to name AppLabs as the Largest Software Testing Services Pure-Play in the World. On the Awards front AppLabs won the Deloitte Top 50 Philly, India Fast 25 and VII Times 100 during the quarter.

During the quarter, we made one very important acquisition - ValueMinds. Through ValueMinds acquisition we gained a high-end toolkit that provides a way for testers to multiply their productivity. It is our intention to use this IP and other IPs to continue to position AppLabs as a thought leader in the testing market. When someone hires AppLabs they naturally get our highly qualified testers but now they also get these proprietary tools and methodologies that can dramatically improve the quality of the software, reduce time to market, all in a very cost-effective way. The tools owned by us through ValueMinds acquisition address the most pressing problems faced by testers: how to generate test data quickly, design test cases effectively, and automate as much of the routine testing work as possible to enhance productivity.

In this issue's Business Insights section we have a white paper on Software as a Service (SaaS) - Supply Chain Software Testing. Technical Insights features Industry Comments on - Customer Experience: An Approach to Testing and Increasing Efficiency-The Advantages of Release-Based Testing Framework. Under the success story heading apart from the featured case studies we have a case study on VMIX, provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) video platform solutions. In the Project Example section we have a paper on how AppLabs helped with the Maintenance and Production Support for a Leading Independent Power Producer.

Like in our previous issues, this issue also covers our company news and has details of events in which we have made presentations.

If you'd like to share something with me, or have any questions or comments, I look forward to hearing it. You can write to me directly at sashir@applabs.com.

Best wishes,

Sashi Reddi
Founder, Chairman and CEO
AppLabs

Business Insight

Reducing cost and duration of a test phase is of utmost importance to stakeholders. Needless to mention overshooting the estimated cost and duration is a cause for stakeholder's dissatisfaction, who is always keen on deploying a system without delay. This whitepaper outlines some of the methods available to reduce the duration and cost of the test phase, whilst maintaining or improving the software quality. Please click here to read more.

Rich Corbridge, Head of Security Testing Practice of AppLabs had recently hosted a webinar entitled 'Security in the Cloud '. The webinar looked at the security challenges businesses are facing while shifting to the Cloud and how to over come those while deploying a secure Cloud.  Please click here to listen to the recorded webinar.

Technical Viewpoint

Organizations that perceive PCI compliance to be a valueless, one-time activity are not getting the true worth out of the program. This perception reflects an immature and dysfunctional security program. The key to effective PCI compliance and information security in general is in the long-term commitment to consistent and focused effort throughout the organization. Please click here to read more.

Small and medium-sized companies needed to have fast, secure and scalable IT infrastructure, in order to cope-up with their business needs. But, these companies lack the ability to have this setup in-premise. This whitepaper looks at the challenges faced by these companies while moving to a cloud environment. Please click here to read more.

Company News

AppLabs Ranked High on Customers References, Company Recognitions and Company Certifications in Global Outsourcing 100, 2010 Listing

AppLabs has been ranked on top of key indicators by the Global Outsourcing 100 final listings of 2010, published by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP). AppLabs made it to the top in the key areas of Customer References, Company Certifications and Company Recognitions. The testing giant also figures prominently in the lists of Best 10 Leaders in Industry Focus (Media and Entertainment), Best 20 Leaders by Industry Focus (Financial Service) and Best 20 Leaders in Regions Served (India).  Please click here to read more.

AppLabs Partners with AutomatedQA, a Leading Provider of Automation and ALM Solutions

AppLabs has partnered with AutomatedQA, a leading provider and top innovator of software testing and development tools. The partnership will allow AppLabs to use AutomatedQA's products to provide the best software testing solutions to its clients, and will let AutomatedQA customers access AppLabs' global testing and quality management knowledge, which is built on strong methodologies and developed from decades of experience. Please click here to read the complete press release.

AppLabs Helps NETGEAR ReadyNAS for Business Products Achieve VMware Ready™ Certifications

AppLabs had certified NETGEAR's entire ReadyNAS® family of high-performance unified network storage devices for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) VMware Ready^TM status. AppLabs had certified that  both desktop and rack-mount ReadyNAS for Business products, including the recently announced ReadyNAS 3100 and ReadyNAS 4200, have all passed its rigorous VMware® testing for the NFS and now the iSCSI protocols.  Please click here to read the complete press release.

AppLabs Joins the IBM® Software Value Plus Program as an IBM Rational Solutions Partner

AppLabs had joined the IBM Software Value Plus (SVP) partner program as an IBM Rational Solutions Partner. The program gives partners access to resources, services and benefits that will help AppLabs build and maintain a successful partnership with IBM, which will help it to optimize business results for clients and further strengthen its testing practice in support of IBM Rational solutions. Please click here to read the complete news.

AppLabs at Application Security Testing Conference, 2010

Mageshkumar Mariappan, the technical services manager at AppLabs spoke  at the plenary of Application Security Testing - a STeP-IN theme conference recently.  Magesh spoke on Emerging Technologies and Challenges in Security Testing: Developing a framework to establish and support security testing of ever-changing application landscape'.  Please click here to download the copy of the presentation.

Recent Webinars

AppLabs had organized the following webinars in the last quarter -

Web Performance Testing - Agile or Waterfall?  

Agile and Waterfall approaches have been the topics of endless discussion in the testing world. Opinions vary leaving experts to carefully examine the two and provide the right answer and solution.

In this live webinar, Ralph Decker AVP of the AppLabs Performance Testing Service Line, discussed the approaches and methodologies for performance testing applications that are developed using Agile and Waterfall methods as well as the Agile and Waterfall approaches to performance testing. Please click here to listen to the recorded webinar.

Increasing Efficiency: Advantages of Release based Testing Framework

In most organizations, the IT development has release-based software models and testing is believed to be an integral part of it. Establishing a release-based testing framework enables standardization of testing deliverables, formation of global regression test suite, setting up of overall test automation approach and helps create processes to streamline testing across Releases. This is extremely effective in multi vendor outsourcing model.  In this webinar, Neha Kalantri, Delivery Manager at AppLabs, provided an overview of how setting up a testing framework for a release helps the organization reduce IT development costs and time to market, hence improving quality. Please click here to get the copy of the presentation.

Risk based testing approach to complex capital market systems

In the fast paced financial services industry, organizations must do all they can to remain competitive. Stephen Massel, Solutions Head for Financial Services vertical at AppLabs, in this webinar showcased a practical example of how to plan the functional testing of a complex trading application. In the live webinar, Stephen Massel provided a detailed overview on testing of a major stock exchange application with complex order management rules, multiple order flow entry points and output interfaces. Please click here to listen to the recorded webinar

AppLabs in the News

Financial Express - AppLabs tops in key categories of Global Outsourcing 100

CIOL- AppLabs partners with AutomatedQA

TMCNet - AppLabs attains ISO 13485:2003 accreditation

The Hindu - Software Testing Market Calling

Express Computer - Cloud testing: attracting demand