Market Overview 2008: Automated Testing Software

Conventional wisdom says that the goal of testing is to find bugs in software, and that this should be achieved by running known usage cases that yield expected results. This opens the door to automation and automated testing solutions. New applications, however, are altering this simple picture. We still want to see that software functions perform as expected and purge applications of bugs before they go into production. But new application architectures and more flexibility at the end user interface multiply the number of end user use case scenarios and the potential interference with other apps and infrastructure components. Testing is now broadening its focus from app functionalities toward scalability, performance under stress, and usability improvements. The market impact of this more comprehensive approach translates immediately into trends, such as: 1) the consolidation of pre- and post-production tools, as exemplified by IT management software companies' acquisition of testing companies/products — like HP Software and Mercury, IBM and Rational, and Oracle and Empirix; and 2) the extension of ITIL's scope beyond production toward life-cycle management processes.