Spring is in the air here in Edinburgh – a bit early, but then we’ve not had much of a winter…unlike last year! Time to share our latest news update which we hope you’ll enjoy reading and recommend to others. This newsletter contains details of the latest release of Scapa TPP for Remedy – the most complete testing coverage of Remedy and ITSM Suite systems yet! – exciting details of plans for our Scapa TPP for Thin Client product, the approval and inclusion of our software and services in the UK Government’s G-Cloud Programme and news of some really interesting customers stories, including a hugely successful (and huge!) VDI deployment for Swiss Re and some great Scapa TPP for Remedy “mid-tier” stories (don’t miss the 3-day complete ‘Software as a Service’ testing project case study).
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