Testing offers 25% of our revenues

Can you brief us about the MindTree testing portfolio?

MindTrees independent testing unit has more than a decade old test practice,
with 2,000 test experts. At present, the independent testing business
constitutes around 25% of the companys employee strength, contributing to
roughly 25% of MindTrees revenues.

How do you see the testing market growing?

There is a good demand for testing, especially offshoring. According to a
2008 report, the market for software testing stands at $13 bn, of which about $6
bn is being outsourced to offshore locations, including India. The market is
expected to touch $20 bn by 2011, of which the share of Indian testing market
will be close to $10 bn.

A lot of talks are going around cloud computing and
on-demand testing? How is cloud engagement in test practices?

Cloud takes various roles in testing practices, be it testing the cloud
platform, cloud-based applications, or testing applications through cloud, and
many more. At this point, less than 10% of the testing revolves around the cloud
platform. Though the volume is not high, moving forward it will play a big role.
As regards on-demand testing, our test automation and test strategy are well
defined areas, where we have on-demand offerings. We also have an on-demand test
automation framework, which can be accessed online. We are in the process of
piloting it internally in a SaaS-model.

What are the challenges in the testing domain, and how
does MindTree tackle them?

One of the biggest challenges in this industry is the availability of the
right skill set. If a company wants to go deep in testing capabilities, it needs
to have the core skills in all areas. Other challenge is the domain expertise.
We have a strong focus on domain-based testing solutions, covering domains such
as communication, travel and transportation, BFSI, manufacturing, and so on. For
example, for travel and transportation we have verified and validated
applications, including portals for vehicle rental, cargo handling, airline
accounting, billing, and hotel reservations.

Also, working on mission-critical applications becomes a
challenge. The testing companies need to be ready with solutions real-time. They
need to work on a propagation to serve the customers on bothonshore and
offshore model. Like, we have our testers working in the customers environment.

Akanksha Prasad/CIOL

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in