Don't be Evil - inspiring theme at the Sogeti Executive Summit 2010

 
For some years now we have  been bringing new thoughts and ideas to a selected number of clients in all Sogeti countries through a VIP event called Sogeti Executive Summit hosted by our global CTO Michiel Boreel - a true hands-on visionary. The next summit will be held in Octber in Venice, Italy, with world-renowned speakers such as Carlotta Perez, Michael Braungart, Martin Lindstrom and Joseph Pine.

At the heart of the Sogeti Executive Summit 2010, we will be looking at a number of far-reaching questions such as:

• Should the motto for the 21st century organization be ‘By doing ‘good’, we will do extremely well!’
• Will this be the end of the extreme focus on enhancing shareholder value?
• Is technology the key to restoring trust in organizations and confidence in the economy as a whole?
• Do you have the capabilities to create persuasive technologies for your organization?

For me, our summit is thought leadership at it's best.
www.sogeti.com/summit2010

Concrete help to implement social collaboration platforms available

I just love the fact that our experts constantly shares their knowledge through books. The latest one helps organizations on the verge of starting collaboration platform implementation projects. And it is a great help especially when it concerns the major part of the project - the social implementation. We have had so many requests regarding that topic since we launched our own social collaboration platform last year for all 20,000 employees so sharing some great advice in this new book feels great.

The new book consists out of two parts that can actually be read as two separate books. The first part is called From Crowd to Community and describes in a sometimes hyperbolical but always fun to read way Sogeti s vision on Web 2.0 and inspires the reader to enter a new world where we all collaborate in new ways. The second part is called TeamPark Platform and Method. This part describes what Sogeti considers to be a true social platform and the method, the trajectory, organizations have to follow to utilize a successful social collaboration platform. Having an implementation method to rely upon seems to be a big need as social collaboration seems to be hot on the market helping organizations to collaborate and share knowledge in new exiting ways.

Pdf's of the book are available at www.sogeti.com/publications.
If you are curious about our own investment within this area visit www.sogeti.com/teampark.  

Put it into practice; Test using a cloud!

This week we finished a pilot project using a cloud environment as a test environment, and using test tools from the cloud. For this project our goal was to design and implement a Development and Test Cloud, to see how it could help our testing, using a real testing project from one of our clients as a pilot.

We created a test environment in the cloud. This included the set-up of the required testing tools from within the cloud, the required services (instances) and storage. In the environment, test management tools and test execution tools were also available.

We now had a System under Test (SuT) where we could execute manual and automated test scripts, which were exchanged with the test management tool. All this in the Cloud.

Experience

Well, what did we find out? The cloud for development and test environments has its strengths, but there are also some challenges to overcome.

The strengths were:

• The set-up of the environment architecture is very fast.
• The performance of the current cloud environment is sufficient for a normal-sized project. Performance is scalable - using more or less cloud resources (no figures available yet).
• Using integrated IBM Rational tooling, it was possible to do central management over the cloud environment (or more if applicable).
• The use of standardized test tools (SaaS) helps to cut time on set-up.
• There are system resources available in the cloud for applications and storage, freeing up system resources.
• Data location for storage, servers or applications is, in terms of compliance, traceable in the control panel of the cloud. It’s transparent where services are running and data is stored. Later this summer there will also be a possibility to use separate data (using VPN), for example on your own network.

There are, however, some challenges to overcome:

• A test environment coordinator needs to have technical skills, because they are needed to understand how to install and manage some of the cloud services (on Linux).
• There is always a confidentiality risk when important business information is set in a hybrid or public cloud. As it should be, most of the security is left to the user, and tools are limited.
• Back-up facilities are not ‘out-of-the-box’ yet.
• Networking is limited; no VPN, firewall or subnets are available. These are needed to control access to the cloud servers.

Our conclusion

A testing cloud with test environments in a cloud computing environment makes it possible to use cloud computing for testing and acceptance environments, and so potentially simplifies the process and strips out some testing costs.

With cloud computing and virtualization, it’s possible to create multiple (testing) environments in the cloud. These environments can therefore be used as testing and acceptance environments, so reducing the need for other expensive environments that have to be set up internally and are only used when tests are executed. It offers a wide number of environments to perform a comprehensive range of testing activities.

The cloud set-up is not directly cheaper than the set-up of traditional environments; there are still costs. But the real opportunity to cut costs of test environments lies in its management and control. When a (sub) area is not needed, it can be turned 'off', and then turned ‘on’ again when necessary - the environments is immediately up and running within a few minutes! A very real advantage for most of our clients!

Better testing? Use DTAP!

“A fitting test environment is required for (dynamic) testing of a test object” according to TMap® NEXT. But setup and maintenance of test environments is a expertise testers don’t have so much knowledge about. However, they are dependent of the test environment, because without a test environment no test can be executed! So what kind of infrastructure do we need to create?

For a good quality of the test object and as preparation for production it’s recommended to have an infrastructure that makes this available. It happens to many times that typical test issues are related to the infrastructure. Test environments aren’t ready on time, interfaces are missing, test data is bad or messed up by other projects or environments don’t look like production. Test environments are one of the most critical success factors of each test section. How beautiful the test plans that we write may be and also how good we prepare everything, once the test environment puts us in the lurch all is done for nothing!

DTAP Model
The DTAP model is a technical aid to support testing, DTAP stands for Development, Test, Acceptance and Production. The principle of this model is that every user of the infrastructure has an type of environment without being bothered on it by others or focuses on special type of tests, e.g. performance or usability testing. Every party in the software development gets a defined environment type. The environment types are equal to the four stages in software development: developing (development), testing (test), accepting (acceptance) and using (production). This DTAP model provides an infrastructure on which products can be tested until it goes into production.

Having a good and manageable infrastructure for testing is good for multiple targets. If tests carried out on production, than the greatest risk of testing is the disruption of the product, like a software failure or performance problems. And, of course it’s undesirable that a customer is suddenly faced with changes (new or different functionality) within the product. This is, however, inevitable when testing on production. Because the new functionality is introduced on the production environment in order to test it. This cannot be foreclosed to others.


Four separate environments
These four environments should ideally be separated from each other. Transfer from one environment to the next environment should be done through procedures. For example, nothing can go into production until all test results are positive and at least the client has approved them. In order to realize these environments an considerable investment is required.

By using use of these separated environments, the test levels for each test environment can be executed with more control and therefore better! With proper design and management it will also lead to less distortion and therefore a shorter duration of the testing phase of a project.

Ask The Experts

Soon we will launch a new initiative called "Ask The Experts". It'll connect to a new channel that we are thrilled to launch very soon! In fact, this very post is a test post to try out the integration between the blog and the new channel... More to follow soon!

Turning the Technology Leadership Tables

Has anyone else noticed the major innovation in technology has shifted from corporate America to the consumers? I might be slow but I just discovered this when talking to a client about Social Networking. The technology we use at home has become so ubiquitous and easy to use we don't even notice it. However, when we go to work, we don't get that same experience. The technology is dated and limited in capability.

Because of the high-cost of entry, corporation's introduced us to PC's. About that same time email burst onto the scene. Those days of business leadership in IT are long gone. Two easy examples are:

• A modern enterprise organization needs social networking like LinkedIn or Facebook because college graduates entering the workforce are demanding it; they'd rather give up email than Facebook.
• Look up your favorite corporation in the AppStore, they'll probably be there. iPad and all types of mobility solutions are coming on fast and furious. Obviously, this didn't come from corporate innovation; it's driven by the consumer experience.

Customers are savvy and so are employees. I yearn for the days of leadership in IT.

In the 80's / 90's – Enterprise IT led the push for IT.

• PC – companies had to
• Email
• Internet
• Productivity (word processors)

2000's – Focus on Y2K

• Internet enters every household
• Leverage the power of RIA and SOA
• Beginning of social application begins
• 3G and iPhone

2010 – Consumer mentality shift

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Mobility

On Digital (Mobile) Humanism

Eternal fame for our WebSci10 paper, which is available here.

Why cloud computing matters

I have a new role within Sogeti. That's about clouds and testing. I'll be the project leader of how we can use IBM Cloud Services at our clients. Well that's a nice new job, but why do clouds matter so much.

I got this video and it can show us why it matters!

Mobile EHR Access Will Be Killer App

Wireless communications, social networking and medicine may converge soon. From the report Consumers and Health Information Technology: A National Survey:

“Most respondents say we should not let privacy concerns stop us from learning how health IT can improve health care. More than half of adults are interested in using online applications to track health-related factors, and almost half are interested in medical devices that can be connected to the Internet.”

“Two-thirds of American physicians have smart-phones. Over one-third of American doctors use Epocrates, a program for mobiles and laptops which offers instant information on drug-to-drug interactions, treatment recommendations and so on. The software will soon be able to access electronic health records (EHRs) via mobiles which could be the killer application of wireless health.” Source: The Economist.

Posted by Jaap Bloem.

A cloudy environment

Cloud computing is a hype word nowadays. When you look on the Internet you find a lot of articles, blogs and books about it. But how can it affect the testing in your company? Can the use of cloud computing help in reducing the costs or complexity of testing or speed up testing?

 

The ‘Cloud’ makes it possible to use cloud computing for your testing and acceptance environments, and so potentially simplify the process and therefore strip out some testing expenses.  The opportunities that cloud computing provides  are one of the technical barriers James Whittaker once spoke about in his blog series about the Future of testing.

What does cloud computing offer? It gives you the sheer number of environments to perform all of your comprehensive testing. With cloud computing and virtualization, it’s possible to create multiple (testing) environments in the cloud. These environments can address multiple types of OS, browsers, settings, configurations, registries, languages, security settings and whatever more you want! These environments can therefore be used as testing and acceptance environments, so reducing the need for expensive environments that have to be setup internally and are only used when the testing team executes its ‘magic’.

Internal testing and acceptance environments should be permanently available for testing projects within your company. This creates a permanent press on your budget. Cloud environments can be enabled whenever needed. With this creating a cost reduction on your enevironment management.

In these environments it’s also possible to create specialized settings so the testers can test applications from every available use and infrastructure. All the required tooling, data and test scripts can be added in the cloud and be (re)used with the sole purpose of thoroughly testing the system. It also gives your testers the opportunity to retest the defects that were found on those particular configurations where the defects were identified. Cloud computing enables an immediate reuse of complicated test infrastructures! And this reduces the complexity behind those environments because software can be added to it at will.

This is not only the case for the testers, but also for your users. They can create their own personal environment in the cloud. So this enables your developers to create applications in ‘look-a-like’ user configurations. Developers won’t get bugged by defects that only happen in the user environment, because they’ve already tested against those configurations. And this speeds up the testing. Fewer defects found during testing means not only cost reduction, but also faster time to market.

Cloud computing delivers the opportunity to have all the testing and acceptance environments we want - for a fraction of the cost of creating these configurations for real. And only a mouse click away!