How Time Machine saved the USDA (and all us taxpayers) money

In the heart of the debate season, candidates are in the midst of making promises that the studies show they won't keep. How they will save this and implement that. Then we all get angered when we learn of these disappointing reports of government bureaucrats conducting acts of waste, fraud and abuse of our hard-earned tax money.

The idea has become so prevalent that some of us may actually think our government has no intention of saving us money. They wouldn’t know savings from a hole in the ground.

Well, every now and then, one agency does have a stroke of ethics and fiscal responsibility, and that single flash can save taxpayers thousands of dollars (if not millions) and actually, maybe, create an efficient government agency (that should seem like an oxymoron, right?).

Let us tell you a quick story about the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The USDA implements the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program, which is a food-stamp program designed to provide healthy food for pregnant women and mothers of young children who are at or below the poverty line. The program has had its challenges over the years, especially dealing with large databases in conjunction with the states which have their own databases for WIC participants.

The WIC program runs its databases and various administrative tasks through Microsoft’s Active Directory platform, and that has been problematic for the USDA in the past.

At different times, the USDA would have to conduct software tests that are date-sensitive; but Active Directory did not allow its system or domain server clocks to be altered, so WIC officials would have to constantly wait until a future time became current before running a test, and that often created backlogs and bottlenecks.

The USDA learned about Time Machine software, and was able to implement and execute it layered on top of the system clock, and it allowed the USDA to run the various tests it needed to, when it needed to, and could use the virtual clock on Time Machine to do it without altering the system clock.

This allowed testing to be more regular and consistent, and established a rhythm and efficiency at the USDA in the WIC program that makes it run more smoothly than ever before, as the numbers of WIC enrollees and participants has increased in recent years.

It is easy to see how the installation of the right automated software testing tools can easily save an organization thousands of dollars in administrative costs. And that, friends, is called being a good steward of taxpayer money.

About Time Machine

Software Virtual Clocks for Time Travel Testing. Simulate past and future dates effortlessly with Time Machine®, enabling comprehensive testing of your date- and time-sensitive applications. Ideal for validating critical business processes like quarter-end and year-end processing, billing cycles, regulatory compliance (including Year 2038), and policy lifecycles during integration, upgrades, virtualization, cloud migration, and containerization. Eliminate the risks and downtime associated with system clock resets in complex environments like Active Directory and Kerberos.

About Solution-Soft

The Leader in Virtual Clock and Time Travel Testing Solutions

Since 1997, Solution-Soft has been at the forefront of virtual clock software and time travel testing solutions, empowering organizations in the ever-evolving digital world. Our flagship product, Time Machine, has revolutionized application testing, enabling thousands of companies, including 47 of the Fortune 100 US companies, to reduce costs and accelerate project delivery by an average of 3 – 10 times across traditional systems and containerized applications.

The Time Machine Product Suite extends these capabilities, optimizing cloud migration, test automation, Agile/DevOps, and containerization testing. Our latest innovation, Time Machine for Containers, supports standalone Docker containers and large-scale Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters (including a 16,000+ CPU core, 1,300+ namespace deployments).

Trusted by over 2,000 customers worldwide across diverse industries (including 3M, AMEX, BBC, Boeing, and more) and partnered with industry leaders like Accenture, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat, Solution-Soft, founded in 1993 and headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, provides cutting-edge solutions for your time-sensitive testing needs. Learn more at www.solution-soft.com or call +1.408.346.1400.

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