Web page failures can significantly impact the success of online business

Software product evangelist says applications should be tested as they are built, not when development is complete

Hong Kong - 19 May 2004 - Companies that have a storefront on the web face serious financial losses if their web page fails for even an hour. According to software product evangelist Sean Salisbury, this impact depends on a number of business-related factors, however he cited several high-profile companies that have publicly estimated lost revenue per hour of downtime at anywhere between US$22,000 - US$275,000.

In his address at the Microsoft Developer Conference "DevDays 2004 No Box, No Boundaries" that opened in Hong Kong today, Salisbury, who is product evangelist for development and testing tools at Compuware Asia Pacific, painted a disturbing scenario. "The revenue impact can be substantial but the potential loss of return business in even greater," he said.

"What happens if a customer is interacting with your website, perhaps attempting to place an order for your products and the software that processes that order fails? Some customers will be persistent and find a way to place their order, even it if means contacting you the old-fashioned way, by phone. But the vast majority will give up quickly. Not only is this a lost order, but the customer will likely find the same or similar products on a competitor's site. Chances are you've lost them for good. This is why the availability and reliability of software applications is now so critical in today's business world."

Salisbury explained that one of the key issues in the software application development lifecycle includes the continuous process of development, testing and production deployment. His address at today's conference focussed specifically on automated software quality (ASQ).

Introducing the issue, he cited the following statistics from the Standish Group:

US$250 billion is spent annually on application development in the US
31% of projects will be cancelled before they ever get completed
52.7% of projects will overrun their initial cost estimates by 189%
Only 16.2% of software projects are completed on time and on budget

Salisbury believes that organisations often start their development too informally, without formal documentation. He added that roughly half of all software defects can be traced to incomplete or inadequate specifications. He added that ASQ provides several keys to success. He said that ASQ best practices include finding and fixing errors quickly, conducting early and iterative testing, understanding application fitness and streamlining team communications.

Stressing that the key goal of the application development process is to achieve a high level of reliability in the finished product, he added, "One approach is to embrace the concept of testing as the application is being built, rather than beginning testing when it has been completed."

With more than 29 years' of experience in mainframe and client-server computing, Salisbury is the company's principal technical liaison expert on automated software quality. Currently coding in more than 15 programming languages including .Net (C#), Java, C++ and Assembler, his key role at Compuware is to work with customers to ensure the successful implementation of DevPartner and QA Center, Compuware's flagship product suite for building and deploying reliable enterprise applications.

Compuware is the sole Gold Partner of the Microsoft Developer Conference in Hong Kong.

Compuware Corporation, a multi-billion dollar company, provides business value through software and professional services that optimise productivity and reduce costs across the application lifecycle. Meeting the rapidly changing needs of businesses of all sizes, Compuware's market-leading solutions improve the quality, ease the integration and enhance the performance of distributed, e-business and enterprise software. For more information about Compuware, please visit Compuware at http://www.compuware.com/.

About Compuware

Compuware Corporation, a leading provider of software and technology services, delivers industrial-strength solutions for the enterprise computing environment that dramatically improve productivity, quality and performance across the application life cycle. For more information about Compuware, please visit http://www.compuware.com.

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