Cognizant beefs up testing business

R. Ragu

IZONE launch: (From left) Ms G. Sumithra, Senior Vice-President, Testing Practice, Cognizant; Mr Mohammad Zahoor, IT Director, PEMCO Insurance; Mr Allen Shaheen, SVP; Mr Partha Iyengar, V-P, Gartner; and Mr R Chandrasekaran, President and MD, Global Delivery, at the IZONE launching programme at Siruseri near Chennai on Thursday. —

Our Bureau

Chennai, July 9 Cognizant Technology Solutions has increased its employee strength in software testing practice by ten times to around 9,000 people in the last four years. Nearly 75 per cent of the testing staff are sited in India and the rest at various locations, including Europe and Latin America.

Software testing practice is one of the fastest growing businesses for the US-based software company with offshore centres in India. While software testing is still considered a ‘secondary’ choice among students, Cognizant takes nearly 50 per cent of students from non-engineering disciplines and trains them for six weeks on the testing practice. These employees move quickly to the second level and are on par with any other software professional.

The company established software testing as a business unit in 2001 and ramped it up to around 900 employees in 2005. Today, it is an independent testing unit with its 9,000 career testers, testing code written by the company as well as by third-parties such as clients and competitors. Over 75 per cent of the software code tested by Cognizant is provided by client or third party vendors who would have developed the software application, according to Ms Sumithra Gomatam, Senior Vice-President.

Cognizant does functional testing (for example performance of an ATM); specialised testing (test the performance on security, load and automation) and consultancy (help clients on testing). The company has more than 200 business analysts recruited from premier business schools in India who bring in the required domain expertise on testing engagement, she told newspersons at the newly built Siruseri campus that has a dedicated testing centre.

Innovation centre

Cognizant has launched its platform, IZONE, that will foster innovation and enable the company to deliver greater value in the area of testing. The platform was inaugurated by Mr Mohammad Zahoor, IT Director, PEMCO Insurance, a Cognizant client in the testing practice.

The platform will facilitate “ideation, catalyse knowledge sharing and showcase testing innovations that help reduce testing effort, time and cost, while improving quality,” said Mr Allen Shaheen, also a Senior Vice-President, Testing Practice, Cognizant.