Fanfare Simplifies and Accelerates Test Automation for High-Tech Equipment Companies

Flagship Product FanfareSVT™ Speeds Time to Market and Reduces QA Costs While Improving Product Quality

Mountain View, California - June 26, 2006 - The Fanfare Group, Inc., delivering world-class testing solutions for companies developing high-tech equipment, today formally announced the company's formation and launched FanfareSVT, an integrated test development environment with a unified approach for rapidly building test cases and automating the equipment Quality Assurance (QA) process. Also announced today was Fanfare's appointment of a new chief executive officer. (See separate press release-"Fanfare Appoints Tom Ryan as CEO.")

With rising product complexity and global competitive pressure to shorten product release cycles, QA organizations are struggling to do more, in a shorter amount of time, with the same or fewer resources. Fanfare helps equipment vendors, both large and small, break the QA backlog by radically simplifying and accelerating test automation. With Fanfare, testing activities that used to take weeks or months can now be performed in hours or minutes at the push of a button.

According to Fanfare customer Chris Saturley, director of system verification engineering at Cedar Point Communications, "It is critical that we meet the needs of our customers in a timely manner. FanfareSVT helps us automate the repetitive, time-consuming functions that we perform on a daily basis, such as setting up the testbeds or tearing down different protocols."

FanfareSVT is the first commercially developed test automation software for validating the functionality of high-tech equipment. With FanfareSVT, test cases are easily reused and ported to new devices, freeing up QA teams to focus on increasing test coverage and improving time to market. FanfareSVT is built specifically for functional, stress, and load testing of equipment and systems accessed through command line interfaces, embedded Web interfaces, and any device that can be controlled through Tcl. FanfareSVT easily integrates with existing in-house QA systems including regression testing infrastructures, commercial test equipment, and bug tracking systems. "The Fanfare team is a group of accomplished entrepreneurs with a proven track record of building successful companies," said Andrew Verhalen, partner, Matrix Partners. "We backed Fanfare because they are addressing a pressing market problem and transforming the way that high-tech equipment vendors are managing product release cycles."

"The testing of high-tech equipment and devices that infiltrate our daily lives has become bogged down by increasingly complex software and the manual testing required to ensure quality products," said Theresa Lanowitz, Founder, voke, inc. "This has become a pain point for the networking equipment industry which is in need of a solution to address the testing backlog. Delivering products and services to the market to enable test automation and address the unique software problems found in devices is crucial. Software delivered in devices must be customer ready and meet the usage demands."

"Customer experiences with product quality can often make the difference between market leadership and second place," said Kingston Duffie, founder and CTO at Fanfare. "The winners are going to be those that can release products quickly, with high quality. Fanfare's goal is to help high-tech equipment manufacturers dramatically simplify and expedite test automation, ultimately improving the working lives of every member of the QA team while driving improved product quality. With FanfareSVT, QA teams can now take control of product release cycles rather than being driven by them."

Fanfare Webinar

Fanfare will be hosting an interactive Webinar on "Breaking the QA Backlog - Test Automation for Networking Equipment" on June 28, 2006 at 10:00 a.m. PDT. The URL to participate is: www.fanfaregroup.com/webinars

About The Fanfare Group

Fanfare is revolutionizing how high-tech equipment vendors manage product release cycles. By combining test development, execution, documentation, and automation into a single step, the company offers the first commercially-developed test automation software for validating the functionality of high-tech equipment. Using the FanfareSVT™ family of products, quality assurance teams improve customer satisfaction and reduce QA costs. Founded in 2004, Fanfare is a private company based in Mountain View, California, with venture backing from Matrix Partners and Redpoint Ventures. More information about the company and FanfareSVT can be found at www.fanfaregroup.com

Media Contact:

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

[back]