IDC and Gartner forecast that the enterprise spending on
independent testing services would cross the benchmark of
$30billion by 2015. Yet another highly reputed research firm, PAC
has forecasted the software testing spends to hit Euro 100bn by
2014!
It is not surprising to industry folks that testing today is
seen as the "Fastest growing niche in IT space" What is it that is
driving such unprecedented growth in the software testing market? A
closer look points us to a few towering factors that form the
kernel of this spend:
1) Rigorous up-front requirement validation: As a result of poor
requirement gathering, the cost incurred in removing the defects
later in SDLC is very high. Adding further, the increased code
complexity and high end development environment are leading to pre
and post deployment defects. As a result, enterprises now
understand the benefits of driving validation to the front-end.
Hence they are adopting front-end validation strategy that
minimize the cost spend on quality initiatives by reducing
the number of defects identified during validation life cycle.
2) Increasing use of cloud based services: With more and more
enterprises offering its services over cloud, security remains one
of the most important concerns. Securing the apps over the public
and private cloud is one of the major mottos of any enterprise.
Transparency and open access being the main features of cloud, has
also led to threat like hacking of sensitive information. Thus
testing the cloud is in no small measure contributing to this
massive surge in enterprise spending on independent testing and
validation services. Add to this, the spend on performance testing
that many enterprise consider a natural pasture for cloud.
3) Building risk mitigation strategy: Though this strategy is
seen more as a part and parcel of driving testing throughout the
SDLC, most enterprises are taking this approach very seriously.
Enterprises are trying to drive down the defects in first place so
as mitigate the risk that arise post release. As a result, demand
for test automation, test framework, end-to-end app testing, etc.
which can mitigate the risk, are leading to mounting demand
and spend on testing services.
4) Increased adoption of TCoE: Today, enterprises are highly
aware about the benefits and ROI they get through TCoE. Though not
everyone is trying to setup their own TCoE, outsourcing apps to a
third party independent testing vendor is always an option. By
leveraging vendor's established testing framework and test
processes, an organization can actually move away from their
unproductive methodologies.
5) Automation: Automating common processes help enterprises
reduce its time to market thus minimizing overall validation
efforts. Automation of regression test beds or automation of
platform configurations is the common area of interest for various
organizations. Though the initial investment required in automation
might be high but the benefits one gets outruns the cost easily in
long run.
6) Compliance testing: The increasing number of regulatory
compliances for each industry has paved the way for compliance
testing. Every regulatory firm is coming up with a new set of
compliances which vary for each and every industry (like PCI DSS,
SOX). Failure to meet any of these compliances can cost permanent
damage to one's brand and business. Thus, in order to meet these
industry-specific compliances, compliance testing is gaining
currency.
7) Product IP protection: Testing vendors are now-a-days
offering robust protection frameworks to help enterprises
(especially product based enterprises) protect their IPs against
any theft. This kind of protection is extremely important in order
to gain customer confidence and is directly linked to the
enterprise's revenue generation strategy.
8) PaaS testing complexity: Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) comes
with its own set of testing complexity. On one hand it facilitates
its customers to directly use the underlying components thus
leveraging integrated development environment (IDEs) in cross
browser environments, they also demand sophisticated analytical
techniques to validate components functionality and performance.
Apart from these, they also need to get evaluated for load testing
and compatibility testing with various browsers.