Mercury polishes applications testing tool

Mercury Interactive has released an updated version of its application quality assurance tool, adding user-acceptance features to the software and expanding its integration with other Mercury testing tools.

Mercury's initial Business Process Testing product, first released about a year ago, is part of the company's Quality Center suite of software for automating and tracking application-testing functions. The new version adds a user-acceptance certification step to the testing process, which now features a Web interface that business executives can use to try out a new application and provide structured feedback on it.

The addition is intended to automate a step that is often left to ad hoc manual documentation, says Matt Morgan, Quality Center director of products. "This was driven by [customers'] need to have a closed-loop system that documents all of this on a nice audit trail," he says.

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Mercury Interactive has released an updated version of its application quality assurance tool, adding user-acceptance features to the software and expanding its integration with other Mercury testing tools.

Mercury's initial Business Process Testing product, first released about a year ago, is part of the company's Quality Center suite of software for automating and tracking application-testing functions. The new version adds a user-acceptance certification step to the testing process, which now features a Web interface that business executives can use to try out a new application and provide structured feedback on it.

The addition is intended to automate a step that is often left to ad hoc manual documentation, says Matt Morgan, Quality Center director of products. "This was driven by [customers'] need to have a closed-loop system that documents all of this on a nice audit trail," he says.

In the new version, Mercury has also enabled integration with its WinRunner regression testing software, allowing customers to plug current WinRunner test scripts into Business Process Testing. Mercury says it hopes the move will expand the product's customer base by making the tool more attractive to WinRunner's estimated 75,000 users.

In the 10 months it has been on the market, Business Process Testing software has been used by 150 organizations, Mercury says. Raymond James Financial has significantly sped up its testing process since purchasing Quality Center two years ago, according to Quality Assurance manager Leanne Stumph. The St. Petersburg, Fla., financial services company initially deployed Mercury's QuickTest Professional testing tool, another Quality Center component, but found the software too developer-centric for its business-analyst users. "We talked to Mercury about our options, and they led us to" Business Process Testing, Stumph says. "It was much easier for [the business analysts]. It led them step-by-step, and they can understand it from their standpoint, the business side."

Using Business Process Testing and QuickTest Professional in combination, Raymond James has run several applications through testing with Mercury's products, including a mutual fund order-entry system and an application to transfer information from the company's PeopleSoft ERP system to a custom application.

Mercury estimates that a 15-user deployment of Quality Center, including Business Process Testing, costs around $50,000.

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