InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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July 24, 2000 |
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Testing Services Put IT To The Test
Some small and midsize Companies benefit from testing system limits before going live
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hen BankAtlantic began to implement an online banking service last year, it looked to IBM to help determine how well the current technology could serve the bank's customers. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., bank, which reported a net income of $30.9 million and average assets of $4 billion for the year ended Dec. 31, 1999, has since successfully deployed a service that lets consumers make online payments, view account balances, stop payments, and transfer funds between accounts. But the system probably would have had a rocky start if BankAtlantic had not sought the help of the IBM Global Services Testing Center.
BankAtlantic CIO David Bartholomew says that the testing uncovered a number of problems. "There were basic functionality problems with the flow of the screens and the look of the screens," says Bartholomew. "Our server wasn't configured correctly and couldn't handle the volume of users we were pumping through it during the testing procedure."
Small and midsize companies have largely ignored IT testing services, but IBM is trying to change that. It's been strengthening its service offerings and refocusing its marketing to get the attention of that business segment. IBM executives say the goal is to help emerging businesses understand the limits of their systems before disaster strikes.
Other systems vendors are also broadening testing services for smaller companies. A Hewlett-Packard testing site in Cupertino, Calif., has dedicated an entire floor to the needs of start-up dot-coms, Internet service providers, and application service providers. At the site, fledgling companies can stress-test their E-commerce applications on an HP server or on a cluster of servers to determine the number of hits their site can handle, for example. "We've seen an increase in the number of small and midsize businesses looking to us for testing within the past two years, especially Internet startups," says Mark Jourlait, director of marketing for North America PC business at HP. Jourlait says most of these companies can't afford to have their networks down for even a few minutes. "To dot-coms, uptime and availability are mission-critical," he says.
IBM Global Services' main testing facility in Gaithersburg, Md., built to the tune of $1 billion, is an 80,000-square-foot space that hosts more than 6,000 miles of fiber-optic cable. Since most companies operate their networks on multivendor platforms, the facility houses hundreds of servers from a variety of vendors, including servers from HP, Dell, and Sun Microsystems.
Although the center was created for businesses of all sizes, additional space is being allotted for small and midsize businesses. "We can literally rebuild a company's entire network in this facility," says Jeff Gore, center director. "We can mirror your workloads and introduce a new software application into it, thereby introducing the technology into your network before you actually use it."
But Eric Schuster, managing director at the research firm AMI Partners, questions whether most small businesses will be interested in such services. He says that only 20% of the companies with 99 or fewer employees are heavy IT adopters, meaning that a majority of small companies don't have IT systems to test.
Even if a small company depends on IT to drive its business, chances are it won't have a defined IT department, Schuster says. And since there's no one to hold accountable if an application or E-commerce initiative proves problematic, managers are less likely to spend time and money on testing. "Companies with over 100 employees are more likely to have an in-house information systems department, which means they have someone to hold accountable when something goes wrong," and are more likely to invest in testing, reasons Schuster.
But Bartholomew says small companies need to be more savvy and focused about IT. "Small and midsize businesses are loathe to spend money on testing, but they always end up paying for it when problems arise with systems integration," he says. "But I say, if it works, no one will question how much money you spend on testing. Many times, I worked with companies that had unsuccessful implementations of hardware and software because we were penny-wise and pound-foolish."
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