Challenge

Khan Bank has 4,500 employees, of which 3,000 use its production systems on a daily basis. This includes a core banking system, a card transaction processing system, and internal applications. In addition to this, customer channels such as Internet banking, mobile banking, and ATMs need to be available 24/7 to provide a consistent customer service.

Mr Arvind Joshi, IT Director for Khan Bank, explains the challenge: “We install new software releases every two months. In total, each release requires that we run 3,500 test cases. Our test case automation was minimal and the manual effort involved in the go-live of a new release was excessive.

We wanted to benchmark the user base and transaction time to internal and external stakeholder and to do so we needed to perform stress or performance tests on the various systems. We couldn’t do this manually, as we just didn’t have the required capacity. We were using our colleagues to do test transactions. Not a particularly productive use of their time, and it still didn’t get us to the volumes we need to properly stress-test our systems. The risk of unplanned application downtime was too high so we were clear that a solution was needed. We also needed a more structured testing process which would allow us to plan our work and deliver new releases on time.”

Solution

Khan Bank looked at different options in detail. Mr Joshi comments: “We liked Silk Test® because this was in use with other banks using the same core banking system and had proven its worth. Silk Performer® and Silk Central® met our other testing requirements and so the Micro Focus solution set seemed a really good fit for us. However, what most impressed us in the evaluation process was the continuous commitment from Micro Focus to establish a partnership with Khan Bank and this is what made the decision for us.”

Testing specialist Manthra Software Services (Manthrasoft) was engaged to help scope the requirement and implement the new, complete, test management solution, consisting of Silk Central for test management, Silk Test for test automation, and Silk Performer for performance testing. An automation framework that can work across any application was implemented and testing on selected modules of the core banking, internet banking, and the cards processing application were automated. Full performance testing was introduced on the core banking and internet banking applications.

The implementation was smooth, as Mr Joshi comments: “Our experience with Micro Focus has been very positive and we really appreciated the experience Manthrasoft brought to the project. Training was detailed and informative across the whole Silk set. We also noted how responsive the Micro Focus Support team is, our requests are often answered within minutes. We liked the consultative approach Micro Focus took throughout the implementation, helping us make informed decisions to set us up for future success.”

Results

The bank has been able to establish quality benchmark which every application is tested against. This is a series of automated tests which will determine whether a go-live can go ahead, crucial to ensure a high quality product.

Having implemented the Silk solution set, Mr Joshi has seen a clear difference: “Early indications tell us that the Silk solution helps us implement more stable releases, improving the application availability. Application changes often involve correlation and dependency. By testing applications across different systems we can make sure they work. Silk Performer helps us regularly check the performance of different systems so that we can scale up when we expect a peak in usage. With Silk Central we have full visibility into the status of each testing cycle and we can plan much more effectively.”

He concludes: “Our manual testing effort has been reduced by at least 30% and application tests are completed twice as fast. We are very pleased with our results and plan to extend the use of the Silk solutions to all applications used within our bank.”