Mobile application testing for the enterprise

Mobile application testing for the enterprise

Accenture brings together deep knowledge of the enterprise, expertise in mobile technologies and strong end-to-end testing practices to help all enterprises fast track mobility deployments into their business. Mobile applications have moved beyond providing consumers with fun or casual utilities on their devices. As businesses seek the productivity and efficiency gains available from mobility, mobile applications for the enterprise are enabling their people to work smarter on the move, manage costs and even drive revenues, both for the enterprise and its customers. Enterprise applications are no longer simply just an e-mail client. They can now handle much more complex tasks and services including interfacing with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relation Management (CRM) applications. They are increasingly deployed to boost productivity in healthcare, airline and travel, hospitality, music and similar industries. Enterprises across the globe are at different stages of recognizing this trend and bringing them into their business operations. As applications grow within the enterprise, they are expected to make up over 50 percent of the $25 billion annual mobile application market. 1 First movers have already laid down a mobile blueprint, and are deploying enterprise mobility into their operations. A large number of enterprises are now recognizing the potential benefits of this trend. But as they start to build mobility they are grappling with a number of common challenges, covering the conceptualization, design, build and deploy phases of creating an efficient enterprise mobility strategy. 2

Three key enterprise mobility challenges Before they can reap the benefits of mobility including among other goals boosting business productivity, enhancing their customers experience and reducing business costs, businesses must overcome a number of challenges. The top three challenges most face are: 1 Dealing with evolving mobile technologies, addressing the platform roadmap When developing a mobility blueprint, the first challenge that any business needs to address is the complexity associated with the mobile platforms. Today s landscape is very different from the recent past. Then it was largely senior and middle management who used mobile applications and these tended to focus on a select few devices that were provided by the company. The mobile landscape today embraces a much more diverse range of devices and platforms, reflecting the preferences of both employees and customers. This means that deploying an enterprise application has to cater to a much larger number of smartphone and tablet devices operating on multiple platforms, with different display configurations, network options, power and memory requirements, touchscreens and platform roadmaps. What this demands in practice is the ability to rapidly design, develop and test applications, taking into account different programming languages, debuggers, emulators, integrated development environments, cross-platform development tools, installer packaging options, development and testing and automation tool costs. 2 Integration of mobile technologies with the enterprise mainstream For enterprise applications to be available on mobile devices, they need to be integrated with the larger systems such as ERP, billing systems, CRM and several other sub systems of the database for access, security, utility services, device management, integrity and authentication, conflict management and so on. Deployments can fail to deliver if they are not sufficiently tested, or can drive up costs if they are not deployed with a roll out plan that encompasses the complexity and variety of mobile users needs. 3 Enhancing security to the highest standard Enterprises are naturally keen to embrace mobility as it allows them to perform a wide range of activities many times faster, and at a much lower cost. However, their enthusiasm should not distract them from some of the fundamental risks to which mobility gives rise. And one of the most important of these is security. Mobility means that large volumes of information and sensitive data now flow across the enterprise and into the outside world. Security on the mobile device therefore has to be aligned with the overall security policies of the enterprise, and enhanced to address additional threats arising from the inherent vulnerability of mobile devices. These threats can be even more pronounced as users interact with mobile applications that co-exist with their personal applications on the device. While using those personal applications can appear innocuous to the user, they can lead to devastating consequences if security is not sufficiently rigorous. Developing and testing enterprise applications therefore must adopt a far more robust and responsible approach to security in comparison to general purpose applications that are available on app stores across the world. 3

Accenture s approach to testing mobile applications for the enterprise Addressing these challenges requires a strong end-to-end testing practice, backed by an in-depth understanding of enterprise operations and expertise in mobile technologies. Accenture, as a large enterprise with strong mobility and testing practices, offers enterprises of all kinds the unique ability to build and deploy an end-to-end test strategy for enterprise mobility to accelerate their business growth. Accenture Mobile Applications Test Lab for the Enterprise is a comprehensive solution that enables an enterprise to test its mobile applications from across the application developer community, with a structured approach to performing end-to-end testing, all the way from planning to application launch. Accenture ROSA Framework, a powerful approach to testing mobile devices and applications designed for the mobile industry, has been extended to the enterprise. The ROSA Framework provides an enterprise with the powerfully distinctive ability to access devices remotely and test them in their operating environments. Businesses can move blocks of work offshore to manage costs and deal with competing peaks in test schedules, simulate network and radio conditions to debug issues and automate tests that can reduce regression, overall release efforts and lower costs. Accenture Delivery Methods for Testing provides a robust framework designed to ensure quality in testing, meeting launch timelines and manage costs. Accenture test teams have extensive experience of testing applications end-to-end from functionality all the way to application certification in order to help ensure defect-free deployments and a smooth roll out. Our end-to-end approach to testing covers all aspects of mobile application development. Key areas include: Functionality Testing: Accenture brings together subject matter expertise in enterprise domains and experience in developing test libraries from use case generation to script, execute and automate testing functionality, along with concurrent and interactive application behavior, and failure handling. Integrity and Security: Mobile applications will need to be tested for all of the same security threats that apply to a desktop or web application. However, in addition they will also need enhanced testing to address the specific threats relating to mobile devices. Testing for security is therefore performed at four different levels, covering the device, application, data and network. Thorough testing is performed to help ensure data protection by encryption on the device and in flow. Critical functionalities such as remote wipe, forensic analysis and application security are checked through expert review of security source code on the mobile platform. Security at the device level is verified for integrity for all software updates before deployment, and tested before deployment of all security updates. Performance and Reliability: Most enterprise applications are data intensive. While mobile platforms have been rapidly developing and now offer levels of performance that are almost on a par with desktops, challenges in terms of memory and performance persist while handling large transactions. These can be detrimental to overall system performance. To address this, Accenture uses in-house and commercial tools and utilities to test application performance and reliability for typical user conditions over extended periods of time to help ensure performance and reliability of the application. 4

Device Compatibility Tests: The fragmented nature of the device and platform landscape means there is a need to perform specific tests to help ensure compatibility of applications with device platforms, different display sizes and orientations, backward compatibility and platform evolution. Accenture s test teams are able to make use of the significant expertise that has been built up by the Accenture Mobility Services practice. Our Mobility Services practice has many years of experience in R&D, engineering and product development to help ensure applications are developed and tested with platform roadmaps in mind, taking account of advances in display technologies, evolution of operating systems, device drivers, multimedia and compliance to platform specifications. Application Protocol Conformity: Mobile applications exchange information across various communication channels and subsystems. It is critical, therefore, to help ensure applications are developed in accordance with the various communication protocols such as HTML5, UMTS, WiFi, WiMAX, WAP, USB, NFC and Bluetooth and are interoperable with other devices, back ends, and applications. Accenture testing teams have the required expertise and experience of communication protocols, standards and specifications to develop and test any mobile application for its conformity with all standards. Enterprise Service Monitoring: As enterprises integrate their services it is essential to monitor the health of the service on the device, and to help ensure that it operates with, among other considerations, data consistency, service update monitoring, correctness and completeness of information services, authentication and security services, reminders and standing instructions. Application Qualification and Certification As enterprises increase their use of mobile applications, it is extremely important to help ensure their applications are safe and reliable. Applications will frequently need to be approved and certified for the platforms on which they are to run. Given the nature of enterprise applications, and the far-reaching implications of errors that can lead to significant financial and brand impacts, Accenture has the necessary Test Infrastructure (Accenture Test Center) Test Planning Optimized test effort planning Overall test plan Resource planning Test lab planning Requirement Traceability Matrix Functional Tests Integrity and Security Performance & Reliability Tests Mobile Application Developer Enterprise Application Media Content Applications OEM Utility Applications Games & Entertainment Web Service Network Service Providers expertise to take a mobile application through key platform certification programs, and design a customized certification program for the enterprise to help ensure the safety and reliability of the application. Test Execution Resource scheduling Balanced manual and automation testing Maximise defect detection. containment Strategic sanity and regression cycles Device Compatibility Tests Test Reporting Test Execution dashboard & detailed report Defect root cause analysis & leakage report Debug logs Quality Matrices Application Protocol Conformance Tests ROSA Test Framework (Remote, Offshore, Simulate, Automation) App Launch Application signing App store certification and qualification Enterprise Service & Monitoring Tests App Certification & Qualification Tests ROSA Enablers Reusable Test Libraries Ecosystem of Test Solution Vendors Network Simulator Labs Global Test Centers of Excellence Accenture Delivery Methods (ADM) for Testing Quality & Timely Delivery 5

Accenture Mobile Applications Test Lab for the Enterprise Accenture Mobile Applications Test Lab for the Enterprise has its foundations within the mobility practice and is supported by Accenture Test Centers of Excellence (TCoE) across the globe providing a wide range of services for our enterprise clients. Accenture Mobility Services' offers include: Mobility Consulting Services: Management and technology consulting services to help our clients develop mobility strategies, mobility business and technology plans, and design mobility solutions to drive additional enterprise and customer value Mobility Software Services Applications: Software development services for mobile applications including custom, packaged, and hosted client, client/ server and cloud-based solutions with support for all leading high-level operating systems (HLOS) and cloud platforms Mobility Software Services Devices and Platforms: A range of embedded software services for clients to best enable a product or device containing embedded software, such as mobile phones, vehicles, industrial solutions, household appliances or consumer electronics Mobility Managed Services: A managedservice platform to help clients launch and scale vertical mobile offerings quickly on a variable cost, transaction model basis 6 Mobility Business Integration Services: Integrated business and technology mobility services through a vertical or functional domain. This service provides large scale, integrated solutions utilizing the full complement of Accenture Mobility Services offers to service our client s enterprise mobility needs The Accenture testing practice is made up of more than 12,000 testing professionals worldwide, delivering predictable and easyto-adapt solutions through its TcoE. The TcoE drives a wide range of benefits to our clients including: Business driven testing by reporting on quality, using advanced metrics Fixed agreements on level of quality (output) Business process knowledge Accenture s continued commitment to deliver agreed results on-time and on-budget The TcoE network is part of Accenture s Global Delivery Network and operates from locations including Brazil, Canada, India, Philippines, UK, US, France, Spain, Slovakia and Argentina. There are a number of test capability groups in other Delivery Centers which operate on a smaller scale. In addition, Accenture also builds dedicated TcoE for our clients, either utilizing the Accenture Global TcoE network or building a separate center organization in-house or in one of our other Delivery Centers. In summary, Accenture Mobile Applications Test Lab for the Enterprise delivers managed test services that bring together best in class expertise, experiences, tools and infrastructure to support an enterprise on its mobility journey. Some of the key benefits of working with Accenture may include: Competitive advantage by reducing time from concept to launch by up to 25% Reduced Capex spend by up to 30% using the ROSA Framework Ensure quality, safety and reliability of mobile applications crucial for productivity and brand value of the enterprise A managed-service platform to help clients launch and scale vertical mobile offerings quickly on a variable cost, transaction model basis.

Contact us For more information on achieving high performance through mobility, please contact: Aidan Quilligan Accenture Mobility Services Technology Delivery Lead E: aidan.quilligan@accenture.com T: +44 (0) 161 435 5108 Venugopal Ramakrishnan Accenture Mobility Services Testing Lead E: venugopal.rk@accenture.com T: +44 (0) 203 335 2132 Or visit: www.accenture.com/mobility Endnotes 1 Copyright 2011 International Data Corporation (IDC) The State of Mobile Enterprise Software in 2011: An IDC Survey of Applications, Platforms, Decisions and Deployments Published: September 25, 2011 About Accenture Mobility Services Accenture is focused on enabling its clients to achieve breakthrough growth throughout the rapidly changing mobile ecosystem. Accenture Mobility Services offers five mobility services including consulting, software services applications, software services devices and platforms, managed services, and business integration services. These are designed to help organizations embrace business to employee (B2E), business to consumer (B2C), business to business (B2B) and machine to machine (M2M) business opportunities. Accenture offers mobility and embedded software services across a wide range of industries and platforms, including Android, Apple ios, Blackberry, Linux, Meego, Symbian, Windows Phone and Windows 8. About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 246,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$25.5 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011. Its home page is www.accenture.com. For more information on Accenture Mobility Services please scan the 2D barcode. Copyright 2012 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture. Rights to trademarks referenced herein, other than Accenture trademarks, belong to their respective owners. We disclaim proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.