Storage Leader Turns to Fanfare for Strategic Testing Platform to Accelerate Product Development Lifecycle

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - November 10, 2009 - Fanfare, delivering innovative testing solutions to service providers (SPs), network equipment manufacturers (NEMs), and enterprises, today announced that Pillar Data Systems has selected Fanfare's iTest®, the company's flagship test automation software, to automate the company's end-to-end testing process. iTest will also be used to standardize the communication across teams.

Pillar Data Systems, which develops industry-leading, application-aware storage systems for mid-size and enterprise organizations, will replace its three, disparate automation solutions with iTest. iTest will provide a common platform from which test assets can be communicated across the developer chain for more effective documentation, test reproduction and defect resolution. Test cases can now be reused and referenced at any point during a product's testing cycle. iTest will also eliminate the time-intensive process of manually recreating testbeds.

"Streamlining our testing process with a powerful, versatile testing tool like iTest will enable us to gain a competitive edge and achieve our business objectives, and to continue providing products of exceptional quality to our customers," said Kim Kershenstein, vice president of QA and test engineering for Pillar Data Systems. "The ability to cross communicate between teams within our company will speed up the product development lifecycle and ultimately help us get products to market more quickly."

Using iTest, Pillar Data Systems will also eliminate the use of manual scripting languages such as Tcl and Perl. The shortage of testers with advanced manual testing and scripting capabilities creates bottlenecks that make it difficult for product testing to keep pace with product development. Furthermore, new graduates no longer have formal training in these areas. Companies have had to invest significant resources in either finding and hiring testers with these skills or training them over a period of several months. iTest fills this void by providing everyone involved in the product development lifecycle with standard test capabilities, regardless of their individual scripting skills.

iTest is the first and only commercially developed test automation software solution that enables testers and developers to define and execute tests that verify the functionality, performance, and behavior of a device or group of devices. These tests can then be used to find, reproduce, and resolve defects more quickly and enable an automated regression system. iTest customers experience greater testing coverage, earlier defect detection, faster testing cycles, and reduction of testing backlogs, resulting in faster time to market, improved profit margins, and enhanced customer service.

In addition, iTest's newest feature, Virtual Testbeds, delivers considerable new value to testing organizations by enabling testers to build test cases before devices exist, beginning the quality process months earlier than before.

"We are excited to add Pillar Data Systems to the growing list of companies who are experiencing, first hand, the significant value that iTest provides to their organizations," said Tom Ryan, president and CEO of Fanfare. "The company's level of commitment to product quality is clear with their choice of iTest."

About Fanfare

Fanfare provides automated testing solutions that enable service providers, network equipment manufacturers, and enterprises to enhance productivity throughout the quality workflow by streamlining system and device testing, reducing product cycles, and lowering costs. Using Fanfare, quality assurance teams and developers can leverage a common testing platform to deliver quality services and products to market faster and more efficiently.

Media Contact:

Marisa Marzano
Big Sky Communications
(705) 484-5105
marisa@bigskypr.com