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Data Storage Company

A top data storage company streamlines Oracle ERP testing with Tricentis Tosca test automation

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test cases in qTest

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Oracle test cases automated with Tosca

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faster testing compared to manual testing

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Company overview

A global leader in data storage solutions with a long-standing reputation for innovation and excellence in technology had a vision for its IT transformation a few years ago. With a diverse product portfolio that includes hard drives, solid-state drives, and data center solutions, the organization provides cutting-edge storage technology to individuals and enterprises worldwide. Its mission? To enable the world to capture, preserve, access, and transform data, fostering the next generation of breakthrough solutions. To make this vision a reality, it needed a performant IT infrastructure that could run every release with confidence, at speed, and increasing in scale.

Digital transformation and ERP consolidation

When it embarked on its major digital transformation journey, the company decided to consolidate three separate ERP systems into a single Oracle Fusion Cloud platform. This migration was a critical step to streamline its operations, improve efficiency, and support future growth. However, the complexity of the migration presented numerous challenges regarding software testing and quality assurance.

Initially, its quality assurance strategy relied heavily on manual testing, with over 70 manual testers required to ensure the integrity of its systems before going into production. This manual approach was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors, making it difficult to detect all potential issues. Furthermore, the company had previously used Selenium for test automation, which proved to be unstable and required extensive maintenance, further complicating its efforts. The quarterly updates of Oracle Cloud only leave two weeks to fix bugs before they move into production. If bugs are not fixed, the release is delayed by a quarter.

Challenges:

  • Complex ERP consolidation
  • End-to-end testing across complex landscape
  • Short time available for testing quarterly updates
  • Existing testing tool required in-depth Java knowledge

Transition to Tricentis Tosca

Recognizing the need for a more robust and efficient testing solution, the organization’s QA team turned to Tricentis Tosca. The decision to choose Tricentis was influenced by several key factors.

First, Tricentis Tosca offered extensive automation capabilities that could handle complex end-to-end testing scenarios, which was essential for the seamless operation of the company’s diverse applications and systems. Second, Tosca’s ability to automate regression testing and quickly adapt to changes in the testing environment promised significant improvements in testing speed and efficiency. The self-healing features of Tosca minimized maintenance efforts by automatically updating test cases to reflect changes in the application, reducing the need for constant manual intervention. Lastly, unlike Selenium, which required deep Java knowledge and constant script maintenance, Tosca’s model-based approach made it easier to create and maintain test cases, allowing the QA team to scale their testing efforts more effectively. Without having to upskill people in Java, it is also easier to get automation engineers productive faster with Tosca than with Selenium.

The implementation of Tosca at the data storage organization was a collaborative effort between the company’s internal teams and Tricentis’ professional services. This cooperation ensured a smooth transition and successful deployment. Key steps in the project included the initial setup and training, where Tricentis provided comprehensive training and support to the internal testing team, ensuring they were well equipped to use Tosca effectively. The testing efforts are coordinated by a Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE) of 10 people.

qTest for easy project tracking

The team then automated 465 Oracle ERP test cases, focusing primarily on critical business processes that spanned multiple applications and systems. They integrated Tosca with Tricentis’ test management tool, qTest, allowing for streamlined project tracking and test case management across various teams. The QA lead finds qTest “very easy to track projects for the project managers.” The qTest database currently contains 45,000 test cases. Even non-engineering teams use qTest for SAP test management, user management, and project team management. In all, qTest is used by over 500 people.

Speeding up test cycles

The implementation of Tricentis Tosca yielded impressive early results. The automated regression testing suite allowed the QA team to execute 300 test cases in the time it previously took to run 200, significantly speeding up their testing cycles. Automation replaced the need for over 70 manual testers, saving approximately 1,750 hours of manual testing time each year. This freed up valuable resources to focus on more strategic organizational goals. With Tosca, the organization could execute comprehensive end-to-end tests involving multiple applications, ensuring thorough validation of data flows and processes. The faster testing cycles and reduced production errors contributed to a quicker release of updates and new features, enhancing the company’s ability to respond to market demands. The reduction in manual testing efforts and improved efficiency resulted in significant cost savings for the company, making the investment in Tosca highly cost-effective.

One particularly business-critical EDA process spans five different business applications and previously required two to three business days to test manually. The process begins with an order submitted from the org’s cloud instance, moving through its SAP instance, creating an SAP order corresponding to the cloud data (i.e., delivery and shipping data), and then back to the cloud instance with the populated line-item data. The program manager leading the QA transformation reported that Tosca is crucial to test all this data movement across Oracle’s Cloud ERP, SAP, and other business apps:

“To test this process manually, it would take two to three days because there would be a few data issues in all the data flows. Tosca helps isolate these issues quicker, and we can get this test executed entirely within Tosca quickly and reliably.”With the successful deployment of Tricentis Tosca, the company plans to extend its automation efforts further. The company aims to automate more Oracle ERP modules and explore automation opportunities in other applications. Additionally, it is working on integrating qTest and Tosca with Jenkins to enable scheduled test execution, further reducing manual efforts and enhancing itscontinuous integration and delivery pipeline.

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