Scapa Test and Performance Platform News

As some of you know, we recently conducted some market research, mostly to improve our understanding of the types of testing capabilities that you currently need from us but also to gain an appreciation of what else is going on in the market and how we align our products with all of that. The information gathered from this research has been fed into the Scapa TPP development strategy. We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who very kindly took the time to answer our questions and contribute their experience to our development efforts.

Development News

As the development of Scapa TPP for Thin Client and VDI into 3-tier product sets continues apace, the plans for our beta testing programme are being finalised. There is, of course, still time to get involved and put yourself forward for this programme. You’ll have the chance to input on key product decisions and see the changes being made to make Scapa TPP more user friendly, helping customers to unleash the full power of the tool, first-hand. Drop us an email via our contact page or, if you prefer, contact us via our LinkedIn or Twitter accounts, or our Facebook page. We intend to post some updates on how the beta testing is going on our website, through this type of newsletter as well as through our social media accounts, so look out for those in the coming weeks.

We’re delighted to say that Column Technologies has now become a fully accredited Scapa Technologies partner and has successfully trained 45 consultants to use Scapa TPP. This is a significant investment and vote of confidence in Scapa TPP from a company that has an exceptional understanding of BMC Software’s Remedy and ITSM Suite products and the market for these products.  Scapa TPP will help Column Technologies provide insight into the costs and risks associated with poor performance of Remedy systems for their customers; identifying bottlenecks affecting performance, scalability and reliability of Remedy systems across the world. Watch out for some future joint marketing activities from Scapa and Column Technologies.

Company News

As mentioned before, Scapa Technologies is growing. To do this, we’ve decided to bring in some more home-grown talent, rather than outsourcing. This way we believe we can grow steadily and ensure that we have the right people representing us. We have already strengthened our development team, bringing Steven McGovern in as a senior developer. Steven is well-known to Scapa Technologies, having worked with us a few years back. He is a key addition to the team, not only for his Scapa TPP knowledge and experience, but for the experience he brings from his more recent projects.

In addition, Scapa Technologies has a number of openings for IT Implementation and Infrastructure Consultants and Sales and Marketing graduates to join the team on graduate placements. If you know anyone that might be interested in any of these roles, please ask them to contact us.

Over to you…

Finally, I know we say this in every newsletter, but we really would love to hear your system performance stories. Everyone has an anecdote that can potentially help others – either in their use of Scapa TPP or regarding their experiences of a testing/implementation/migration etc… project, more generally. We could turn these into case studies (anonymously, if preferred) or just include some details in our future newsletters. Please do let us know if you are happy to share your experience with us.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

The team at Scapa Technologies

Scapa Test and Performance Platform News

The Scapa Professional Services team (our hard-working consultants) have been involved in bringing Scapa TPP to India (although, not for the first time). They’ve been training a team from Cisco in India on how to use Scapa TPP for Remedy for functional testing. The training covered test creation through to producing a verdict report over a wide mix of Remedy APIs and the mid-tier. In addition, they looked at some windows automation (Scapa TPP for Thin Client). All in all, the training went very well and we look forward to supporting Cisco with future system testing projects.

Development News

As many of you will know already, we announced the availability of our latest release of Scapa TPP for Remedy in mid-February. This release focussed on ensuring that we provide the most complete and accurate testing coverage of BMC Software’s® Action Request System® (Remedy) and ITSM Suite™. So, what’s new?:

• Improved testing of BMC Remedy ITSM Suite

• Increased support for Remedy User Tool application deployment (BMC Remedy AR System APIs) and custom applications

• New and improved support for Remedy technology (e.g. Flashboards) as well as updates to other technology (e.g. SOAP, web services, customised extensions to Remedy and ITSM suite etc…)

Further details are available on our website or by contacting us.

With the new release, we’ve been taking a look at our documentation and a new quick start guide for Scapa TPP for Remedy is being finalised and should be available soon.

Moving on to our Thin Client testing solution, there has been some crucial work done to allow scripts to determine if ‘test stop’ has been initiated. This new Scapa TPP scripting function is called ‘ScapaStillRunning()’, is currently available as a patch and will be included in the next release. This function is important for those long running scripts and users will no longer need to wait for every script to complete execution (or time out) before tests can be finalised.

We are committed to making the testing process simpler within Scapa TPP for Thin Client and have improved the steps required to start tests for Citrix® XenApp™ systems, allowing Scapa TPP to create the initial connection (i.e. retrieve the connection file from the web interface). Not only that but Scapa TPP can now re-connect to disconnected XenApp, XenDesktop® and Microsoft® Remote Desktop clients.

Finally, but importantly, we have some big plans for our Scapa TPP for Thin Client product. It has always been a key component of our product range and we are looking to ensure that it continues to be the tool of choice for our current customers as well as for new customers. In order to do that, we need your help. We are initiating a beta testing programme and are looking for volunteers for this effort. We hope to make participation enjoyable and rewarding, as well as getting some help with our development work. Please contact us to let us know if you would be interested in hearing more about this beta programme.

Company News

In the last couple of weeks we have had some great news. Scapa TPP and our related consulting services have been approved and selected for the UK Government’s G-Cloud Programme which aims to simplify the process of purchasing IT products and services – in particular, cloud-based VDI systems – for government departments. This is quite an achievement for a small, independent company and we are confident that this will raise our profile significantly for public sector organizations.

On the subject of profile-raising, we have added to our case studies, recently. A number of these highlight Scapa TPP’s improved testing capabilities for Remedy and ITSM Suite-based systems and focus on the tool’s ability to cover the mid-tier and provide the most complete coverage of Remedy APIs (C and Java), Web Services and GUI integration. These include details of a 3 day testing project on a large Remedy-based SaaS system and are available to download from our case studies page, as well as on our New Remedy Release page.

Also, for an amazing VDI testing project story, take a look at the Swiss Re case study, documenting how we helped one of the world’s largest and most diversified re-insurance companies to manage its huge VDI deployment – a Citrix® XenDesktop® system to over 10,000 users! Read more SwissRe Use Scapa TPP for VDI Deployment.

If you are interested in sharing some of your system performance stories or anecdotes with us, we would love to hear them and, with your permission, would also be happy to make these into case studies or include the details in our future newsletters.

Regards,

The team at Scapa Technologies

Scapa TPP cloud-based testing tool and services approved for the CloudStore ICT Catalogue.

Edinburgh, UK (March 01, 2012) – Scapa® Technologies, a leading provider of independent load testing, performance analysis and monitoring software and services, has been selected for the G-Cloud Programme, a pre-approved group of specialist ICT suppliers to the UK Government. Scapa Technologies’ extensive experience in ensuring the performance of some of the largest and most complex cloud-based Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDIs) makes it a valuable addition to the CloudStore ICT Catalogue.

Scapa Technologies’ Scapa Test and Performance Platform (TPP) has a unique approach to testing IT systems, including cloud-based VDI environments, to which the UK Government has shown a commitment by establishing the G-Cloud programme. By using real user behaviour to generate tests that run from end-to-end Scapa TPP detects system issues, current and projected, and measures system performance accurately. In addition, tests can be set up and run in minutes, allowing projects to be completed within days. For government departments planning to deploy a new or improve an existing cloud-based system, the benefits are clear: lower costs, increased agility and improved user performance. Testing with Scapa TPP ensures these benefits are experienced continuously from the time the system is deployed, providing the best return on investment – a key factor in all IT expenditure decision-making.

Based in Edinburgh, Scapa Technologies is one of a number of small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to appear in the CloudStore ICT Catalogue, which aims to simplify the process of purchasing IT products and services for government departments. The G-Cloud Programme actively encouraged SMEs to propose their products and services for inclusion in the catalogue.

Iain McLeod, Scapa Technologies’ Director said, “As a small, independent, Scottish company, we are delighted that our software and services have been chosen for inclusion in CloudStore alongside some larger software companies and systems integrators, such as BT, CSC and Microsoft. Being small is no disadvantage, however, it helps us to respond to customer requirements quickly and deliver bespoke services in shorter timeframes than may be possible otherwise. In fact, we have worked and continue to work with a number of the larger companies in CloudStore.” Discussing the potential opportunities that inclusion in the CloudStore catalogue could bring to Scapa Technologies, he added, “We believe that the combination of our software’s end-to-end testing and monitoring capabilities and our unrivalled consulting services is unique within the catalogue, and we are looking forward to having the chance to demonstrate the benefits of these to IT buyers in the public sector.”

To find out more about Scapa Technologies’ software and services for cloud-based VDI infrastructures, please visit http://www.scapatech.com and http://www.govstore.net/Catalogue/ViewService/793.

About Scapa Technologies

Scapa Technologies is an independent software company providing Scapa Test and Performance Platform (TPP), a single load testing and monitoring solution that measures system performance, end-to-end, covering traditional desktop, desktop virtualization solutions, tiered, remote desktops and virtual machines. Scapa Technologies also provides training and testing services around its software and has a rich ecosystem of partnerships with application and technology providers as well as services organizations in Europe, North and South America and Asia/Pacific. Scapa Technologies has worked with a wide range of customers across many verticals and has been, and continues to be, involved in some of the largest and most complex system deployments across the globe.

For more information about Scapa Technologies and its products, please visit http://www.scapatech.com.

New release of Scapa TPP focuses on testing and monitoring Remedy® Mid-Tier.

Edinburgh, UK (February 13, 2012) – Scapa® Technologies, a global leader in load testing, monitoring and performance analysis software, today announced the immediate availability of its anticipated Scapa TPP for Remedy, version 3.32 (build 38). This new release represents the most complete testing and performance analysis coverage of BMC Software® Remedy Action Request System® and IT Service Management (ITSM) Suite™.

The key improvements to this newest release of Scapa TPP for Remedy are:

• Improved testing of BMC Remedy ITSM Suite

The creation and structure of tests including custom support for ITSM Back Channel calls, along with the analysis of these, have been simplified allowing tests to be created in a matter of minutes.

• Increased support for Remedy User Tool application deployment (BMC Remedy AR System APIs) and custom applications

• New and improved support for Remedy technology (e.g. Flashboards®) as well as updates to other technology (e.g. SOAP, web services, customized extensions to Remedy and ITSM suite etc…).

Armen Avedisijan, Senior Consulting Manager at Scapa Technologies said, “I’ve been demonstrating the tool’s new capabilities to a number of customers and partners and their reaction is similar to mine. As a user of Scapa TPP for Remedy, this release simplifies my job and extends the tool’s coverage, making it the clear choice for testing Remedy, ITSM and customized systems. We were recently asked by one of our customers to test and validate their new ITSM deployment prior to going live. As there was an extreme pressure not to delay the launch we were given only 2 days advance notice and a 6 hour testing window prior to launch. This was sufficient time, however, to validate the robustness, stability and capacity of the system as well as identify one of the application components that could not keep up with the predicted load. The results from Scapa TPP provided the confidence and the data needed to launch the system and the tool is now being used to assess performance and capacity on an ongoing basis.”

To access this new release, please click here.

To find out more about the new release, please visit http://www.scapatech.com/products/remedy/new-remedy-release/

About Scapa Technologies

Scapa Technologies is an independent software company providing Scapa Test and Performance Platform (TPP), a single load testing and monitoring solution that measures system performance, end-to-end, covering traditional desktop, desktop virtualization solutions, tiered, remote desktops and virtual machines. Scapa Technologies also provides training and testing services around its software and has a rich ecosystem of partnerships with application and technology providers as well as services organizations in Europe, North and South America and Asia/Pacific. Scapa Technologies has worked with a wide range of customers across many verticals and has been, and continues to be, involved in some of the largest and most complex system deployments across the globe.

For more information about Scapa Technologies and its products, please visit http://www.scapatech.com.

GITEX 2011

Cisco Systems Inc., System Test Group

Cisco Systems Inc., System Test Group

Cisco Systems Inc., System Test Group

Cisco Systems Inc., System Test Group