Complexity Driving Market for Cloud Infrastructure Testing and Network Monitoring

As the cloud picks up steam and moves more into the mainstream of IT, there is also a growing need for solutions that enable easy, affordable provisioning and management of test labs for cloud infrastructure.

“We see a lot of investment being made in cloud infrastructure testing and network monitoring,” noted Lior Koriat, CEO of QualiSystems, during a conversation at Interop (News - Alert) 2012 in May.

Some of this investment is driven by new technologies that allow taking different packets on the network and rerouting them by controlling Layer 1 switches and aggregation modules. Those technologies make it possible to do things in new ways, but they also make setting up test lab environments more complex.

Such environments, Koriat explained, no longer just include test equipment; they essentially become private clouds with lots of different servers and software elements. These environments might need to mimic customer environments, and testing often involves not only devices but also the service being provided.

“Application testing is not just about the application, but also about the service and the infrastructure behind the scenes,” Koriat said. “That drives a lot of issues around complexity and setup time.”

QualiSystems (News - Alert), which develops software for lab management, device provisioning, and test automation, is paying close attention to what its customers need and fulfilling those needs with evolving solutions.

That includes inventory management, asset scheduling, and helping to drive new topologies. QualiSystems offers products to help with provisioning during lab setup, which can be very time consuming. It is also firmly grounded in the area of test automation.

QualiSystems efforts in these areas are paying off through increased business in a growing market. The company won Frost & Sullivan’s (News - Alert) 2012 Global Customer Value Enhancement Aware in Lab Management and Test Automation, for its TestShell software framework, a platform that enables tracking and allocation of lab resources, simple creation and execution of automated test scenarios, and comprehensive reporting and analysis capabilities.

“QualiSystems' highly focused business strategies, attention towards minute customer requirements, and expertise to offer differentiated products to its broad customer base has set QualiSystems ahead in competition in the global Lab Management and Test Automation market,” said Srihari Padmanabhan, senior research analyst at Frost & Sullivan, in an announcement about the award. “Highly efficient and innovative, QualiSystems' solutions provide the best value for the money to its global customers.”

Koriat said QualiSystems is unique in its role as a pure-play, multivendor test automatic software provider. And, although it traditionally has served the lab side, the company is now branching out into enterprise account and production network areas, moving beyond pre-production of lab equipment setup and testing into supporting live network environments.