Automated Testing: The Secret to DevOps Agility and Digital Funding

Emmet B. Keeffe III is a Venture Partner at Insight Venture Partners and Founder of Insight Ignite, a program that partners with global organizations to accelerate Digital transformation by delivering insights and technologies that are core to the Digital journey.  Insight Venture Partners is the leading software growth equity firm with $18 billion under management.  

In this blog post, Emmet identifies an opportunity to transform traditional manual software testing and points CIOs to an exciting opportunity to accelerate agility while finding new funding for Digital transformation. Read on for some valuable insights. 

An opportunity to source new funding for digital transformation

Many global IT organisations spend tens and even hundreds of millions on traditional manual software testing.  The people, process and technology surrounding software testing was largely outsourced years ago as a labor arbitrage cost reduction initiative. 

For decades, the automation of functional and performance software testing has been the “holy grail” of software delivery and the dream of many organisations.  For the first time, next generation automated continuous testing tools are now available making it possible to reduce testing costs by 50% or more and reallocate a material amount of this budget to Digital initiatives.

New Dev Team Capabilities

The Agile development process, adopted by all Global 2000 companies, has helped teams deliver software with higher quality and market-focused features through iteration, collaboration and automation. Tightly associated with this movement is the emergence of DevOps, which encompasses a variety best practices including QA and blurs of lines between development and operations. Success depends upon collaboration, a shared mindset where cross functional teams consider the implications of delivering quality software into production and the adoption of next generation technologies such as continuous testing tools.

One major roadblock that often hampers this new Agile software delivery process is the traditional manual testing of applications. Whether this activity is performed in-house, outsourced or both, the results are time consuming and expensive and more importantly at odds with Agile practices. Automation is a game changer must be an integral part of the strategy to deliver software agility.

Test automation delivers many benefits. This includes continuous integration and the ability to uncover defects ‘quickly’, with greater accuracy and coverage. Integrated QA environments allow automated unit, functional and performance testing to be conducted with less resource and before the release of any product.

Automation is as much about culture as it is technology.  With this in mind, forward-leaning organizations are implementing next-generation automated testing tools to accelerate digital software delivery and transforming the people and processes surrounding traditional testing.

Next Generation Tools to Accelerate Delivery

Insight Venture Partners, has made a series of investments in the continuous testing landscape with substantial funding commitments to support next-gen tools, including Tricentis, QASymphony, SonarSource and Checkmarx.

Tricentis – Continuous functional and performance testing

• Tricentis helps Global 2000 companies adopt DevOps and gain success by achieving automation rates of over 90%. The company’s integrated software testing solution, Tosca Testsuite, consists of a unique Model-based Test Automation and Test Case Design approach, encompassing risk-based testing, test data management and provisioning, service virtualization, and more. Tricentis is a reliable enterprise partner, helping to deliver significant performance improvements to testing projects and has been recognized as a Leader in both Software Test Automation and in Functional Automation Tools, with Model-based Test Automation as the standout feature.

QASymphony – Continuous test management

• QASymphony, itself an agile software company, provides enterprise test case management and exploratory testing solutions for development and QA teams. QASymphony’s qTest Platform helps companies create better software by improving the testing speed, efficiency, collaboration and analysis process. The company has over 400 customers across 20 countries including Salesforce, Barclays, Adobe, Samsung, Verizon and Office Depot. QASymphony was recently selected by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor in Application Development” and by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the “Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America”.

SonarSource – Continuous code quality testing

• SonarSource provides world-class solutions for continuous code quality. Its open source and commercial products help customers manage the code quality of their applications, reduce their risks and ultimately deliver better software. SonarSource solutions support development in 20 programming languages such as Java, C#, Javascript, C/C++, COBOL and more. Used by 80,000 organizations worldwide, including eBay, Bank of America, Thales and BMW, SonarSource’s products are the de facto standard on the market.

Checkmarx – Continuous application security testing

• Checkmarx is able to identify, fix and block security vulnerabilities in web and mobile applications. Its product provides an easy and effective way for organizations to introduce security into their Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) to systematically eliminates software risk before applications are released. The company’s customers include 5 of the world’s top 10 software vendors and many Fortune 500 and government organizations, including SAP, Samsung, Salesforce.com, Coca-Cola and the US Army.

Summary

Automated testing accelerates software delivery and represents a strategic opportunity to reduce costs and reallocate budget to the Digital transation. Insight Ignite hosts

Innovation Briefings

that enable CIOs and their teams to discuss topics such as DevOps and Continuous Testing with our investment team and selectively meet executives from relevant portfolio companies.  To set up an innovation briefing, please contact us at ekeeffe@insightpartners.com.

Emmet B. Keeffe III Managing Director, IGNITE More By The Author