Wipro Adds Software Test Center To Its MenuWipro Adds Software Test Center To Its Menu

A bellwether of the application outsourcing market, Wipro Technologies has built a software test center at its Bangalore, India, development campus known as Electronic City.

Wipro is the technology-services division of Wipro Ltd. and among the top four outsourcing companies engaged in offshore software development for U.S. and European companies. Its test center means it will be able to add application software testing for both function and performance to its outsourcing services. It will also be able to test applications developed by its teams before shipping them to U.S. and European firms.

"Testing used to be done on an ad hoc basis as the client requested it, was done by the client, or was not done at all," notes Chris Lochhead, chief marketing officer of Mercury Interactive Corp., whose testing tools will be used in the Wipro Center of Excellence. Most outsourcing companies don't yet offer testing as a standard service, he says.

Wipro's test center is a sign of the growing sophistication of offshore-outsourcing companies, Lochhead adds. Having competed successfully on price, they're starting to say they will "compete on quality as well," he says.

In addition, opening a test center will give overseas clients a view of how a project is progressing. Code that has been tested thoroughly is considered to belong in the completed part of a project. When both an offshore development team and the client use the same testing tools, then the scripts that are written to test completed software can run in either the client's or offshore development location, confirming the results.

Results of testing can be loaded into a summary dashboard presentation for the benefit of a client, who can view them on a shared Web site, measuring progress, Lochhead says. The announcement of a testing Center of Excellence comes the day after IDC, the IT research firm, predicted that the worldwide market for offshore IT services will grow from $7 billion in 2003 to $17 billion by 2008.