The least-know activity in any product development cycle is the verification
and validation part. At the same time, it is estimated that this activity
accounts for as much as 30—50 percent of the total time consumed by any
product development cycle. But things seem to be changing now. Verification and
validation is emerging as an important business opportunity, and at least one
big company, Wipro, is betting big on the opportunity. According to a report on
software testing tools and market analysis and forecast 2000-05 by Ovum, the
total world market for testing tools and related services in excess of $6
billion by 2005. In 2001, it was estimated to be close to $2 billion.
Undoubtedly, it means that the Indian companies have a very big opportunity that
is yet to be tapped.
The man spearheading the V&V initiative at wipro |
gangadharaiah |
Before delving into the business opportunities, one needs to look at some
datapoints. Certain expectations like Windows XP taking off in a major way and
e-business spurring the spending are a reality now. This means that
functionalities like availability, scalability, performance, and compatibility
will become even more important. Some facts that support the argument. A New
Port Inc report says that users are not tolerant of delays of more than 10
seconds, 52 percent of the applications failed to scale as planned, and an
average Web application handles about 72 percent of the concurrent traffic
volume originally planned. And it was observed that the 48 percent of the
applications which scaled as expected had adopted load testing at very early
stages of the development life cycle. The solution therefore lies in quicker
development of better inter-op solutions.
Why Interop Solutions? According to CP Gangadhariah, general manager,
Inter-op Solutions, Wipro technologies, an independent opinion approach is
important as about 30-50 percent of the product development cycle is spent on
verification and validation and best practices, methods, techniques and tools if
available as the business unit focus, will expedite things. Wipro, which has
taken the lead in this direction today, has a dedicated unit for this business
with a mission to enable companies to deliver quality and reliable software on
time. Adds Gangardhariah, "This mission is possible having effective
processes, tools, and techniques and through tailored approaches and
methodologies for functional and performance verification in technology domain
and enterprise applications." The business unit was formed as early as
April 1997 and started working in the optical and GSM-related testing work. This
experience has allowed it to participate in the V&V activities across
different verticals. The need for independent V&V is understandable but what
does it mean? Gangadariah explains,
"It is a series of V&V testing activities at various phases of
product life cycle during development and implementation. This is an activity
conducted by a team that is independent of the design team and implementations
are checked against the requirements and the standards for functional and
performance parameters."
Wipro’s V&V business model includes two options. It has a global
verification center, which is a client-specific lab that takes advantage of the
time difference between geographies, acts like a virtual extension of the parent
lab, and adheres to compliance outlined for client processes. Then there is the
onsite verification service with domain-skilled engineers and a variety of
verification methodologies that complement clients’ engineering teams. The
company’s V&V services include, among other things, functional and
parametric testing, regression and feature testing, conformance and acceptance
testing, product and interop testing, performance and stress testing, and
integrated test management.
If this is an activity so important, where lies the opportunity? Wipro
experience suggests that there is a huge opportunity in the wireless and optical
networks space, switching and carrier IP space, and in enterprise applications.
Like the GSM and GPRS networks, UMTS and 3G networks, terminals and devices,
Sonet/SDH networks, survivability and security and integrated network
management, open-platform switches and gateways, pure IP networks and
internetworking and conformance space, among other things. Interestingly, the
company has a ready framework for the offerings called LIBRA–which is a
generic test framework to address technology domains among other frameworks. As
a result of this, the company is estimated to have garnered in excess of Rs 60
crore during the past year. Wipro officials claim that the opportunity is huge
and one only needs a dedicated approach, expertise, the tools, and the necessary
alliances.