InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
| September 15, 1997 | |
Bug Catchers
KeyLabs tests software, catching problems before they wreak havoc in real enterprises
By Alan S. Horowitz
Three former Novell employees feel your pain. In January 1996, they did something about it and founded KeyLabs Inc. The three are Jan Newman, KeyLabs' president and CEO; J.D. Brisk, VP of operations; and Kevin Turpin, chief engineer. Since striking out on their own, they have created what they say is the industry's largest commercial network-
testing facility. From this beginning, the company has expanded in other directions: software certification, software development, and products that distribute software over networks.
KeyLabs also provides testing services for corporate users. These are companies that want to make sure that solutions recommended by thei
r vendors live up to their expectations.
"KeyLabs has a unique business model," says Paul Johnston, program director at International Data Corp., a research firm in Framingham, Mass. "They're a niche player that has found a sweet spot."
That business model has evolved quickly. The initial plan came from the classic entrepreneurial strategy: Identify a need, then fill it. KeyLabs' start as a network-testing facility leveraged Newman's background. He was Novell's first software test engineer in 1986 and later headed the networking company's SuperLab, which tested more than 1,700 networked computers. "We kind of modeled our business after Novell's lab," he says, "because we saw there were a lot of people wanting to get into that facility and do proof-of-concept."
Right Fit
KeyLabs' early success has been driven in part by users' healthy skepticism regarding the claims of independent software vendors. "End users hear a lot about vendors making claims that their products do one thing or another," Newman explains. "The bottom line is, do the products really do it?"
The lab helped Macess Corp., a Birmingham, Ala., consulting and development firm that recently had KeyLabs test its software for scalability. (Actually, Macess was working on behalf of a corporate customer that it won't name.) Similarly, Merrill Lynch & Co. recently had KeyLabs test the performance of Internet service providers around the country on behalf of the New York brokerage firm's customers. AT&T also used KeyLabs to evaluate ISPs for one of its internal programs. "We think this end-user market is a huge opportunity," says Newman.
Several vendors also depend on KeyLabs to determine how well their products work in a live environment. Using KeyLabs' lab facility-now equipped with 350 networked PCs-vendors can test architecture, scalability, performance, and other variables without going live across the real enterprise. The testing can be done on both hardware and software. "A lot of companies don't have the resources to have this kind of lab sitting there," says Newman. Using KeyLabs' facility, he adds, they can "make sure their stuff works in a large environment without incurring a lot of overhead."
KeyLabs has competitors, but they focus mainly on testing computer games and standalone systems, says Newman. KeyLabs' advantage is its exclusive focus on networking issues. "We believe there's a demand for full-scale network testing, modeling, benchmarking, and performance analysis," he says.
IDC's Johnston says KeyLab's emphasis on testing sets it apart: "Most traditional service companies are doing other things-testing just happ
ens to be part of their business." By contrast, testing remains the core of KeyLabs' business.
Certification Offshoot
Less predictable was KeyLabs' landing the prestigious 100% Pure Java certification. This came about in April 1996, when Newman decided KeyLabs should attend its first trade show, the JavaOne developers' conference. "I thought Java was going to be pretty hot," says Newman.
He was right. While attending the show to sell testing services to developers, Newman told some of the Sun people there to keep him in mind if they ever needed a certification program. Less than eight months later, the Sun people were ready, and they asked KeyLabs and others for proposals. KeyLabs got the nod and has been certifying products as 100%
Pure Java since last spring. To date, KeyLabs has certified approximately 50 Java products.
Sun says one reason KeyLabs got the Java account was its sophis-ticated approach to customer service. "They by far had the greatest degree of customer-service excellence and a we'll-make-it-work attitude," says James Leonard, market program manager at Sun's JavaSoft division.
One part of KeyLabs' customer-service model that caught Sun's attention was its Web-ready facility. Accessible by companies seeking certification and by Sun itself, the facility lets clients and Sun monitor the certification process entirely online. In fact, it's even possible for an independent software vendor to interact with KeyLabs entirely online (see related story "
Customer Service Without People
").
In the certification business, Newman thinks program management is KeyLabs' biggest competitive advantage. With Brisk, who had been Novell's director for software certification, and
the addition of Mike Fahnert, a program manager at Novell who's now KeyLabs' certification program manager, the company has considerable certification expertise.
Frequent reconfiguration is a major issue for a testing company. If a KeyLabs customer wants its product tested on, say, 200 computers running Windows NT, and KeyLabs' PCs had Windows 95 on them, installing Windows NT on all 200 boxes ordinarily would take a small army of technicians several hours to accomplish. To get around this, KeyLabs has come up with software it calls LabExpert that accomplishes this task automatically. With LabExpert, an administrator can reconfigure several PCs in minutes from a single console. Early customers who saw LabExpert in operation wanted to license it. KeyLabs recognized the software's potential and moved into software development and marketing late last year.
KeyLabs now has two products on the market: LabExpert, aimed at training and testing labs, and ImageBlaster Pro, which installs operating systems an
d is targeted at the corporate IS department and reseller markets. Jeanne Collins, quality-assurance manager at GTE Internetworking in Carlsbad, Calif., calls ImageBlaster Pro her "most prized software possession." Why? "A three-hour rebuild of a system is done by ImageBlaster in 10 minutes," she answers. "I've got 20 systems. We're talking close to 60 hours of labor that I've reduced to an hour."
Training and testing facilities report equally impressive productivity gains with LabExpert. Robert Baird, facilities manager at New Horizons Computer Learning Center in Albuquerque, N.M., says of LabExpert: "I don't think I can live without it." He's reduced six to eight worker-hours of reconfiguration a day to just 30 minutes on his 80 machines. As a result, two part-time workers who are leaving voluntarily probably will not be replaced.
Another customer, Klark Walker, is assistant administrator at a 125-PC student lab at Brigham Young University in Provo. He reduced the time he spends configuring his PC
s to 30 minutes from as long as three days. "A professor would want Windows NT one semester and Windows 95 the next semester," says Walker. "We would do each machine individually. Now, we set up one machine and broadcast to the rest, and we're through."
Training Gaining
KeyLabs plans additional auto- mation-oriented tools for the education, corporate training, and corporate IS markets. "We think there are pretty substantial opportunities in these markets for this technology," says Newman.
As a result, KeyLabs is beefing up its marketing efforts. To date, the company has relied on direct selling and word of mouth. Also, the company is simultaneously recruiting resellers and offering its products directly to users on the Internet.
All this activity suggests substantial growth. Privately held KeyLabs doesn't report revenue and profits, but its work force grew from just three people to 24 in its first 18 months. Looking ahead at the next 12 months, Newman predicts the work force will double in size, and revenue will increase at an even faster clip.
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ver wish you'd tested your latest software package before deploying it throughout your enterprise? That way, the gremlins that haunt you might have been exorcised quickly and easily. If only you'd had access to a lab that provides realistic test runs.
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