HansenCX accelerates 24/7 Global Testing of 1500 Applications with Time Machine’s 15 Minute Launch

Monday, October 14.2024 at 12:00 PM EDT

Project:

Hansen has data dependent time testing that affect business decisions, not just technical workflow performance. Testing is critical to check into future billing, price increases, scheduling service, and cancellations require future testing using past and present data with data modeling and predictive analytics. Systems must perform perfectly so rigorous testing is required. Other complexities like service suspension or changing service offerings mid-cycle must not affect customer experience or application performance. Hansen must identify how billing will look in the future to forecast performance, make business decisions, and anticipate seasonal or economic changes which will impact customer experience, as well as communicate these changes in advance.

Hansen runs around 1500-1600 tests per month, totaling around 6,000 per quarter.  They needed a clean, effective solution to automate the system initialization process while scaling this testing to test more applications at once, and compress the entire testing cycle as the volume of tests exceeded resource capacity. They also needed to be able to time travel applications from any environment in groups vs re-deploy.

Challenge:

Hansen has a complex customer base with rapidly evolving demands, constantly developing their technology so that the Utility and Communication Industries can perform. Hansen operates 24/7 to innovate and create award winning technology alongside constantly changing regulations.

To save costs and facilitate this ever increasing demand, Hansen decided to move their test bed environment from on premise to the AWS and Azure Cloud.

They quickly discovered changing the system clock in the cloud is problematic which causes authentication errors, and time synchronization. Workflows with local machine system clocks became difficult. This prevented them from performing their date & time testing consistently. Further, they cannot sync up with other business units for integration testing.

Hansen’s current environment could only run batches of 20 tests at once due to environmental constraints. Server/database/application configuration & system clock coordination took significant time and an environment could only be utilized for 20 tests within the normal testing cycle. Compute resources had to be re-purposed constantly and environments had to remain available for production work.

Hansen requires software that can check against massive usage at any time point – requiring daily, weekly, monthly, and annual checks analysis and reports.  They must test applications with a myriad of time & date specific functions and triggers.

Another challenge is Hansen’s operations & developers from around the globe; China, Vietnam, and United States run tests in 24/7 shifts. They perform tests, with day operations taking over for night operations to continue testing the same use cases. In order to support testing at this scale, Hansen had to maintain a massive environment and was interested in system consolidation to save hardware and software costs. Because of system clock procedure, it was impossible to hand over in-process tests to the next DevOps shift due to system shutdown & wrap-up necessary for project handover. After decommissioning, initializing the environment to continue testing created a lot of work and compute resource consumption for the next DevOps shift, before testing even began.

They had to change the clock manually to completely stop processes, re-calibrate the system clock, and then re-initialize the system & re-launch the test. Actual compute resources were difficult to manage at a glance, and developers could not transfer tests from one shift to another without downtime. So, project management needed a solution to drive efficiency.

The Technical Environment:

Hansen is also a leading edge organization, and is an excellent example of cloud transformation, navigating a complex technical environment while utilizing the best in architecture.

Hansen leverages an Oracle Database as a Back End & Data Layer, Microsoft Azure & Windows Servers programmed in C# & .NET as a Business Layer, With GraphicUL, AngularJS, and Elastic Incubana being leveraged as their UI Layer. ASP .NET and KAFKA are also used in Unison, and these blocks of technology enable this powerhouse to innovate and develop at warp speed.

With an Agile/SCRUM methodology, CI/CD is in play with Development Operations allowing for a flexible yet consistent method overall.

Their teams run 24/7 and work in global shifts on a high performance, demanding model.

The Time Machine Solution:

Hansen’s Environment includes Cloud & Active Directory. Time Machine’s virtual clock enables them to time travel freely without worrying about authentication failures and system clocks roll backs.  It also empowers self-service and test automation to further boost productivity.

Time Machine’s capability for users & developers to check virtual clocks in and out streamlines Hansen’s 24/7 testing. Time Machine enables self-service which means users are able to assign virtual clocks by themselves without the need to wait for the infrastructure team to shut down & restart the application & database and change the system clocks.

In order to successfully orchestrate 6,000 test cases per quarter, Hansen has to coordinate the management of a complex environment and run 100s of test cases simultaneously without affecting organizational performance. With Time Machine, they can easily manipulate multiple virtual clocks in any environment and on demand, which transformed Hansen’s test cycles and capacity.

“Instead of grabbing a set of 20 test cases for 3 months, another set of 20 afterwards, and another set after that. Hansen can now group 40-60 tests at once in one sprint. They can orchestrate the virtual clock on every process in one environment in a few clicks, or even orchestrate the virtual clocks on applications in different environments in a few clicks. There is no environment or application downtime. By using Time Machine, Hansen can make their tests more efficient by testing all at once, and also don’t have to decommission to change the time of every piece of infrastructure and platform for every test. Instead of taking 3 – 4 days this is automated and can be run 24/7 in much larger batches, faster.” Explained Cesar Zuart, Software Development Manager

“Hansen’s previous test environment set-up & authentication process for one series of time/date tests, such as month end or billing service delivery changes, took 3 days before Time Machine. This now takes only 15 minutes, and only 15 minutes to re-authenticate to initiate yet another set of tests. This reduces system set up time by over 80%, allowing for more rapid tests, with more tests done at once” said Cesar Zuart.

Critically, Time Machine’s Floating License Server provides automated license and asset management across 2 continents. It’s a perfect fit for their developers to apply a license of Time Machine on demand, and return the license to a pool for the next developer, where other developers can see available Time Machine licenses. The Floating License Server empowers their agile methodology in their dynamic AWS cloud environment. Because instances are spun up and down rapidly in cloud environments, license management without Floating License Server would be impossible.

“Time Machine Floating License Server allows us to have 3-4 people working in the US to use the license to do testing and at the end of the day, they turn the licenses in because it is morning in China and Vietnam, where other groups of 2-10 people can use the licenses without administration or checking with their solution provider or vendor. This dynamic licensing creates availability worldwide where our teams can use any available license, then the license gets “checked out”. When the shift is over, the license gets “checked in” and is available for the next tester,” explained Cesar Zuart.  “TMFLS is a true enabler for us. With it, licenses are now automatically shared and managed across our development teams in two continents.  Systems come up and down all the time in the Cloud. TMFLS solves the need to contact the vendor for a new license key whenever a new box come online, which has been a game-changer for us and reduces costs,” continued Cesar Zuart. All in all, with the ability to overcome authentication challenges, test in large groups of test cases or even at the workflow level, and perform testing 80% faster, Time Machine has become an integral part of Hansen’s infrastructure and test bed.

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About HansenCX:

Hansen (ASX: HSN) is a global provider of software and services to the energy, water and communications industries. With their award-winning software suite, they help more than 600 customers in over 80 countries to create and deliver new products and services, engage with customers, and control and manage critical revenue management and customer support processes. Hansen’s mission and resulting promise to their customers is simple – To help them Power the NextTM age of energy and communications experiences and turn them from today´s utilities and telecoms into tomorrow’s next digitally-driven experience companies. Hansen was established in 1971 and has 1300+ employees, with Victoria, AUS serving as headquarters.

About Time Machine:

Time Machine saves ten-fold or more on resources and costs associated with temporal testing of applications. It enables you to finish your large scale software projects on time and under budget. Some other usage scenarios of Time Machine include Cloud migration, time zone adjustment, data aging, Big Data analysis and online training. Time Machine is the original date and time simulation software for Unix and Windows since 1997 and it is Cloud ready. Thousands of customers worldwide utilize Time Machine successfully across all industries on a daily basis; including 47 of the Fortune 100 companies.

About Solution-Soft:

Solution-Soft is the leader in virtual clock, time shift testing software solutions for the ever-changing digital world. Our flagship and market proven product, Time Machine, opened up brand new possibilities in the application testing landscape upon its release in 1997. Today, thousands of applications have been tested with Time Machine, and IT professionals recognize that using a virtual clock is the ideal and safest way to conduct date and time testing. As pioneer in our field, we've created the Time Machine Product Suite and Time Machine for Container, a collection of cutting-edge testing software that augment Time Machine to further streamline enterprise cloud initiatives, containerization, micro services, and IT modernization for end-to-end integration testing, cloud migration, test automation, Agile/DevOPs, Continuous Operation, and Test Data Management.

We proudly provide our 2000+ domestic and international customers, including 47 of Fortune 100 companies, with our advanced solutions to optimize their testing and help deliver projects on-time. Solution-Soft's customers are across all market sectors including 3M, AMEX, AIG, Australia Tax Office, BBC, Boeing, British Gas, Covered California, Dept of Works & Pension, Deutsche Bank, Discover, FedEx, Federal Reserve Bank, Orange, National Australia Bank, SNCF, and Zurich Insurance. We bolster our market presence through robust partnerships with companies including Accenture, Capgemini, DXC, HPE, IBM, Infosys, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, and RedMane.

Founded in 1993, Solution-Soft is privately held and based in Santa Clara, CA.