U.S. agencies: More application testing needed

Two U.S. government agencies are embracing performance-engineering processes and application testing throughout the development cycle as a way to avoid costly fixes after deployment, officials there said Wednesday.

Representatives of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said they’ve deployed performance-engineering software in recent years, and it has helped cut down on problems after development.

“If you catch an error in development, the cost is the cost,” said John Chambliss, manager of the IRS WAN management team. “Once you get to [operations and maintenance], it’s about 100 times the cost.”

For the past two years, the IRS has used application performance management software from Opnet Technologies in Maryland to fix problems in the development of its portals that allow Web-based tax filings, Chambliss said at Opnet’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. If electronic filing doesn’t work, the IRS has major problems, he said.

The IRS uses Opnet’s software on in-house development and also encourages outside developers to use it, Chambliss said.

The IRS has run into several IT problems in recent years. In 2006, the agency paid out more than $381 million in improper tax returns because of problems with a new Web-based version of software that detected fraudulent returns.

Carolyn Aragon, enterprise operations center manager for the Forest Service, said her agency has been using Opnet application performance management software for about eight months. The agency has used the software to help with the development of two applications, including one that allows vendors to create invoices for firefighting services, she said.

Chambliss and Aragon, along with representatives of Opnet and three private customers, participated in a forum on successful implementations of application performance management software.

One of the major advantages of application performance management is testing how changes to software will affect how they run, added Peco Karayanev, senior systems engineer at National Instruments, an engineering design testing vendor. Application performance management helps the company roll out changes “without completely destroying the service we’re providing customers,” he said.

It’s sometimes difficult to get developers to buy into application management, added Farid Dana, director of Dell’s global operations for telecommunication networks.

“You don’t tell them it’s [application management],” he said. “You tell them its application enhancement. Then, they’re receptive.”

While the forum participants sung the praises of application performance management, many organizations are still looking at the technology. “We’re at that stage in the adoption curve where it’s getting out there,” said Alain Cohen, Opnet’s president and CTO.

In many cases, an organization needs to run into serious problems with application development before they see a need, Chambliss said.

Cohen agreed. One large company used “war rooms” during their application development, he said. Instead of a typical war room, where an organization would map out a strategy, this company’s war rooms were places where employees would argue about who’s to blame for an application’s failure, he said.

Application performance management can pinpoint problems in development and “the ‘blamestorming’ can stop,” he said. “Some organizations need to get burned before they say, ‘Okay, maybe we need to go back and call Opnet.'”