Time Machine Provides Assurance against Software DST Issues

Multitude of new and continuing users of Time Machine report they were able to identify all Daylight Saving Time (DST) change defects in their software or ensure that none exist.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., February 21, 2007 — SolutionSoft Systems Inc, a global leader in virtual clock and time travel testing solutions notes today that they have recently received numerous reports from long-term and recent customers of success in using Time Machine to identify and resolve issues in their software applications when calculating the newly revised (U.S. and Canada) DST offsets. 

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 passed by the United States Congress on July 29, 2005 and signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 8, 2005 at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico extends Daylight Saving Time by almost four weeks.  Previously, the start and end dates were the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October.  With this governmental act, the start and stop for each year will be the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.  Further, the U.S. Congress retains the right to roll back to the previously defined dates once an energy consumption study is done.

Time Machine at a Glance: Time Machine is designed to facilitate testing and simulation of specified system dates and times without modifying or resetting the system clock.  This allows defined applications and users to run under any multiple defined future date, past date or time zone desired while the underlying system time remains unchanged.  Time Machine is widely utilized by Global 500 companies in production.

A Must Solution for Active Directory & Kerberos: In a network environment where secure logins are used, such as with Microsoft's Active Directory, or in a UNIX Kerberos environment, users login in with a time-based ticketing system.  If the user’s system clock is more than five minutes different than the Domain Controller's system clock, the login would fail.  As a result, resetting the system clock for forward date testing is not possible in such environment.  Time Machine is the unique solution that let the secure login process see the current system time and allow different applications and users to see the virtual clocks.

The world’s top financial, logistic, energy, insurance and health companies as well as many local and federal level governmental agencies rely on Solution-Soft’s Time Machine to provide a guarantee that the software applications they purchase, acquire through merger or develop in-house to perform their mission-critical tasks will not have any issues with differences in time zones between their locations across multiple geographic areas or catastrophic exceptions handling date sensitive events, such as end-of-month reports, quarter end financials, term expirations or even leap year days. 

Solution-Soft’s sales, technical and professional services support teams have helped many of its customers to complete their testing against the upcoming DST shift from advice on how to use the product, like-industry testimonials, special pricing on training sessions and even offering custom operating system patches created by the team in advance of formal patch sets released by the respective OS vendors.

“We’ve been really amazed at the details some of our customers have provided us on issues with date justification between different applications and even amongst similar systems across distributed regions having issues with event dates, such as this recent shift in DST.” said Michael Morrison, Director at Solution-Soft.  “This change in U.S. Daylight Saving Time has not only affected our customers that have entities and partners that reside solely within the U.S. and or Canada but also has had to be addressed by many of our multi-national customers.”

Solution-Soft’s Time Machine and other Solution-Soft products are available for Linux, Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and MPE operating systems.

The following is a list of some OS vendors’ recommendations for dealing with the redefined DST values:

Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst

SUN Microsystems: http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-102775-1

IBM: Issues affecting DB2, Lotus, WebSphere Portal and Workplace software

http://www.ibm.com/Search/?q=Daylight+Saving+Time+2007+&v=14&lang=en&cc=us&Search.x=32&Search.y=6

HP-UX: http://h10072.www1.hp.com/dst/index.htm

Redhat: http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_80_7909.shtm

Novell SUSE: http://www.novell.com/support/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=3853518&sliceId

Debian:  http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060419

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, Department 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, for more information visit www.solution-soft.com or call +1.408.346.1400.

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