The Hindu Business Line : A test at every turn

AgitarOne allows developers to test a few lines of their code to see if it is on track with the overall program logic. Else bugs and errors are indicated and the coder clears them up right then, says the company.

Sampath Kumar G.P.

Saving on time and costs.

Archana Venkat

Automation is the first choice for IT companies to improve productivity. This is the premise that Vishnu Raned believes will garner more business for his company. This country manager for Agitar Software has roped in 25 Indian clients in the last five years. A poor track record one may say, but Agitar is in the niche business of providing software tools that target developers writing code on JAVA. “Eighty per cent of any team is composed of software developers. They have average skills but do the bulk of work. Unless their productivity is improved, one cannot see a visible improvement in the company’s overall productivity,” he tells eWorld.

Typically, developers write a few lines of code and manually check it, visualising how the code would be executed.

Ten out of 30 such checks reveal an error, says Raned. Agitar’s flagship product AgitarOne automates this manual check and allows developers to test a few lines of their code to see if it is on track with the overall program logic. Else bugs and errors are indicated and the coder clears them up right then.

This is unlike other prevalent testing tools that test code only after it has reached a substantial length and is packaged in a suitable way.

However, when errors are discovered through such testing, the rectification process can take up to 80 per cent of a software developer’s time, says Raned.

“Clients have told us they have seen a 70- 90 per cent improvement in productivity and savings of a couple of a million dollars by using AgitarOne,” says Raned. Agitar’s clients include Cognizant Technology Solutions, Tata Consultancy Sevices, Hexaware Technologies and MindTree Consulting.

The market size for code testing, or unit testing as it is known, is about a couple of billion dollars, he says.

Microsoft, which has a bundled offering as part of its Visual Studio package, is Agitar’s closest competitor. “But Microsoft’s offering is for a .NET platform, which is only about 30 per cent of the industry as coding language. The rest are on JAVA,” clarifies Raned. Asked about revenues, Raned does not share numbers but says India contributed about 20 per cent to global revenues.

The 75-member strong company plans an office in Chennai this year and Raned says the “company will be cash positive soon to fund its expansions.” Agitar is venture capital-funded and has received about $28 million from Sequoia Capital, NEA Capital and Globespan Capital Partners.

By why are other testing companies not entering this market? eWorld spoke to Maveric, ThinkSoft and ReadyTestGo, who said unit testing was a niche market and very subjective at that.

“Other than developers, no one else can code or test their code, not even a machine. So it is unviable for companies to get into this space,” said an official. Others felt there were enough in-house tools for developers to rely on and test code.

archana@thehindu.co.in