Trouble For HP Quality Center/ALM Customers On The Horizon
By now you might have seen or heard about the dramatic value drop of Micro Focus’ shares on March 19th, the aftermath of declining sales and the departure of their CEO. Let’s rewind a moment. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. software business assets, including HP Loadrunner, HP UFT, and HP Quality Center, were acquired by Micro Focus, an infrastructure software UK technology company, September 1, 2017 according to the the Wall Street Journal (2017, September 7). The company later admitted to short term struggles with integrating the acquisition of HPE software business. According to Micro Focus’ published “Strategy and Business Model“, they had forecasted a Four Phase/Year business plan with the goal to ensure steady shareholder returns. Part of this business plan included focusing on “maximizing operational effectiveness”. How will an aggressive cost cutting strategy impact your ability to delivery quality product?
According to the Wall Street Journal, “The company cut costs previously spent chasing growth, and worked to prolong the life of old software by providing maintenance and stitching new fast-growing applications onto it.”
If Micro Focus is holding onto software and not working to push a clear, long term product roadmap and vision, then how soon will your HP Software, like HP Quality Center, become a legacy system that impedes your productivity? How will this impediment impact your productivity?
Software testing is about ensuring that your software releases go live without major defects that would result in costly interruptions to your business. As more companies adopt Agile and are pushing releases faster, it is even more critical to ensure that your software is meeting end user needs without those costly defects while getting to market faster. Your team will need to be able to rely on a tool whose business owners understand the necessity to evolve with the changing state of software development and testing needs.
One of our key partners, QA Symphony, understands this need. QA Symphony understands that there is a growing uncertainty surrounding HP Quality Center, and they have witnessed a growing number of Micro Focus customers migrating out of that software as a result. Will Micro Focus be able to support HP Quality Center customers with their short term and long term needs? Will HP Quality Center be able to dedicate the needed time and resources for their support functions? How soon could they do this as their product becomes stale (because their dwindling list enhancements are really just a combination of quick stitches)? If you are interested in learning about an alternative to HP Quality Center or have questions and would like to speak with one of our agile tools experts, please email us at learn@cprime.com.
Agile doesn’t wait for you, so you shouldn’t have to wait for your tools.
