Rational testing products adopted by IBM solution partnership centres

Rational Software Corporation, the e-development company represented exclusively in SA by Software Futures, a wholly owned MGX company, has announced an alliance with IBM Corporation that will ensure its TestStudio suite is used throughout IBM`s Solution Partnership Centres (SPCs).

Rational Software Corporation assists organisations to develop and deploy software for e-business, infrastructure, devices and embedded systems through a combination of tools, services and software engineering best practices.

"This initiative will assist the software development needs of independent software vendors (ISVs) using IBM Solution Partnership Centres by offering performance testing throughout each stage of the development process," says Themi Themistocleous, Director of Software Futures.

"ISVs will experience enhanced product quality as well as shortened deployment product cycles to market, consequently offering significant benefits to their customers."

Under the terms of the agreement, Rational will provide IBM Solution Partnership Centres with the Rational Suite TestStudio product, as well as technical support, expertise and training. IBM Solution Partnership Centre professionals will be trained on Rational Suite TestStudio in order to help ISVs better understand the performance and scalability of their applications. IBM Solution Partnership Centres will also promote Rational Suite TestStudio as a dependable load testing option for ISVs that do not currently have their own load testing solution.

Rational Suite TestStudio offers users an integrated set of automated testing tools for accurate functional, reliability and performance testing. It includes Rational`s complete set of tools for automated testing and defect tracking and the Rational Suite Team Unifying Platform, which provides a shared foundation for development success by providing common access to development roadmaps, requirements, test assets, defects and change requests. Rational Suite TestStudio provides a complete testing solution for all development projects.

"Many software developers don`t realise the benefits of performance testing during each phase of development until it is too late," says Themistocleous.

IBM customers will benefit from the knowledge that these ISV products have been rigorously tested to perform well in their mission-critical enterprise environments, speeding the realisation of benefits for their business.

IBM Solution Partnership Centres help port, enable, test and market ISV applications running on all IBM platforms, whether porting to the IBM eServer, iSeries, zSeries or pSeries, testing on IBM eServers xSeries, or simply investigating new IBM tools, middleware and technologies. From the test scripts produced using Rational Suite TestStudio, the SPCs will help users execute performance tests of applications running on IBM hardware solutions and deliver the desired performance results.

"With Rational Suite TestStudio, we are able to assist ISVs to conduct extensive performance tests throughout the development process," says Todd Chase, Program Director, IBM Solution Partnership Centres. "We are continually looking for new ways to incorporate leading technologies in our offerings and helping ISVs accelerate their product development cycles."