05/19/2004

Segue Software (NASDAQ-SCM: SEGU), a software quality optimization company, debuted SilkCentral Test Manager 7.0, a “comprehensive solution for the overall management of application quality prior to deployment.”

Segue supplied these details:

SilkCentral Test Manager is a key component of Segue’s recently-launched SilkCentral Quality Optimization Platform™; a platform that allows organizations to centralize the control and management of quality throughout the entire software application lifecycle.

SilkCentral Test Manager manages and maintains software quality from initial requirements up to application deployment. SilkCentral Test Manager provides a high level of visibility into the entire software quality process, thus enabling collaboration amongst the various development and QA groups responsible for building applications and managing software quality across the enterprise. Collaboration arises from the ability to access Web-based results reports anywhere, any time; a central repository that houses all test assets, and a workflow process to facilitate information flow between QA and development. With enhanced collaboration, errors are found early in the quality cycle - when they are least expensive to correct – and quickly resolved. Visibility and a central point of control benefit the quality process by enabling the sharing and reuse of previously created test assets throughout the organization, providing management access to quality status reports, driving fast return on investment and, ultimately, attaining higher levels of software quality.

"We have been using SilkCentral Test Manager throughout the Early Access Program and have found it to be an ideal solution for our telecom customer's quality management needs," said Chris Brown, QA manager, Cymbal Corporation, a Fremont-based consulting organization. "Test Manager is very user-friendly and provides many strong capabilities to help manage the entire quality process. In particular, we like the capabilities it provides to manage distributed testing. With Test Manager's Matrix Scheduler, we can centrally schedule tests to run anywhere on our network. Web-based reporting means we have complete visibility into test results from any browser-based workstation. This also enables a very high level of collaboration amongst all participants in the entire quality process, shortening the release cycle and allowing us to be more efficient in managing test resources."

Specific processes supported within SilkCentral Test Manager include requirements management, test definition, scheduling, test execution and Web-based management reporting. SilkCentral Test Manager also integrates with SilkCentral Issue Manager for the management and reporting of defects.

“Time-to-market and competitive pressures are two major business challenges faced by many organizations today. QA and development groups need to respond by collaborating as never before to shorten the software development and testing cycle – without compromising quality, “ said Andre Pino, chief marketing officer at Segue. “SilkCentral Test Manager has been designed and architected specifically to meet these challenges. With SilkCentral Test Manager, enterprises are able to efficiently manage the entire software quality process with an unprecedented level of management visibility into the quality assurance process and effort. Applications are deployed more quickly and disparate groups responsible for quality – whether across the hall from each other or around the globe – can collaborate, leveraging existing test assets and ensuring resources are focused in critical-path areas.”

Separately, Segue unwrapped SilkCentral Performance Manager 2.6, the company’s newest offering for monitoring software applications from the end-user perspective.

Segue offered these details on that:

Performance Manager is a key component of Segue’s recently-launched SilkCentral Quality Optimization Platform™; a platform that allows organizations to centralize the control and management of quality throughout the entire software application lifecycle.

Derived from SilkVision 2.5, SilkCentral Performance Manager 2.6 introduces a Business Integration Layer™, correlated reports, enhanced health drill-down capabilities, health trend indicators and support for both Citrix® Metaframe® Presentation Server and Oracle® Forms environments. The Business Integration Layer allows access to monitoring results through standard APIs, thus providing customers the ability to utilize monitoring metrics in centralized network systems, enterprise-wide network management systems or corporate dashboards. By incorporating statistical correlation techniques into SilkCentral Performance Manager’s reporting function, enhanced health drill-down capabilities and health trend indicators allow greater visibility into the root cause analysis of performance degradation and errors. Additionally, up-to-the-minute visual information of the health trend of an application is provided. Finally, support for Citrix and Oracle Forms technologies extends the environments supported by SilkCentral Performance Manager.

“SilkCentral Performance Manager provides greater visibility into application performance, post-deployment,” said Andre Pino, chief marketing officer at Segue Software. “SilkCentral Performance Manager can ensure the highest levels of application performance are maintained and can proactively identify potential issues before they impact users and business operations. SilkCentral Performance Manager ensures SLAs are met, eliminates lost revenue due to unplanned downtime and allows an enterprise to ensure a positive end-user experience for their customers.”