Going strong on testing

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: Outsourcing in the Indian IT sector might be on the downslide due to the global financial crisis and recession in the world economy, but the software testing industry and outsourcing in it is growing rapidly. The incessant pressure on increasing the performance of various software is ensuring that the software testing market is getting bigger. The business potential in this industry is also at an all time high.

Typically under software testing, an investigation is done to check the execution and capability of the software programmes for evaluating its performance. “The business potential in software testing area continues to grow, considering the growing complexity of software products and increasing expectations from the end-users demanding the best quality product, along with the increasing number of options available to them,” says Manish Rathi, head, delivery management (Version1.0/ New Venture Services), GlobalLogic Inc.

Software testing, according to Rathi, inherently remains complex and human intensive and software products now require strong domain experience. This has increased opportunities for businesses, which bring in new value propositions in software testing in terms of the processes, technology and business models.

“The size of the software testing industry globally is $13 billion and India has the potential to acquire 60-70% of the world market. The prospects of the software testing industry are very high,” says Vipul Kocher, co-president, PureTesting.

Execution of the various applications at a faster rate in different sectors like airlines, retail, railways, banking, stock markets and the increased dependence of the various businesses on IT has forced software companies to develop a software, which provides quality and accurate results to the end-users.

Gangadharaiah CP, senior vice-president, testing services, Wipro Technologies says, “With clients facing constant pressures to release products and applications faster in the market to ensure competitive advantage, testing phase—which is typically 30% of total software development—is critical to ensure ontime release, within budget and with the agreed level of confidence.”

According to industry analysts, outsourcing in software testing will grow swiftly due to availability of the expert testers and the low cost of testing in India. “The software testing outsourcing market is growing due to availability of a vast talent pool in India. There are more than 20,000 ISTQB certified testers and the low cost has always been an advantage,” says Kocher.

“Functional and performance testing has been outsourced heavily to Indian service providers, but there is growing opportunity for specialised practices like SOA and UAT (user acceptance testing). And the offshore testing services from India have grown phenomenally in the last decade. India’s testing services export market stood at $5 billion for financial year ending 2008 and the market is growing at 40% per year,” says Gangadharaiah.

As the technology is evolving and becoming stronger, there are growing opportunities for both the software and software testing companies. Naturally, business potential from the sector is high. Rathi says, “I would expect that about 30-40% of the outsourcing would be in the software testing area or any businesses/processes supporting software testing business.

According to Rathi, software testing is an integral part of the software product development process. Software product development still remains an extremely human intensive activity, which needs to operate many a times in an ambiguous environment. Because of this, the prospects in the software testing industry will remain strong and continue to grow.