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Test and Measurement: 4 major trends impacting software testing

TechNavio said the growing use of mobile applications is one of four major trends impacting the software testing market, with the other three being the emergence of vertical-specific testing services, the increased use of cloud-based software testing and a shift toward increasingly automated testing.

The firm also said recently it expects the cloud infrastructure testing market to be worth $430 million by 2020, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of more than 16%. Key vendors in the market include Ixia, Spirent Communications, WiPro and Compuware, TechNavio said, and various “agile” testing approaches are gaining momentum in the cloud space.

“One of the latest trends gaining traction in this market is crowd-sourcing for testing services. Cloud infrastructure testing services require flexible and dynamic testing to check the feasibility and performance of the cloud infrastructure itself,” said Amit Sharma, lead analyst for ICT at Technavio Research, in a statement.

-German researchers from ADVA Optical Networking worked with researchers from the Technical University of Denmark to achieve what it called high-speed, lower-power, efficient transmissions for data center interconnections at distances up to 100 kilometers. The researchers said they were able to achieve “real-time transmission of 400 gigabits per second (eight by 50 Gbps) using the [pulse amplitude modulation with four amplitude levels] transmission format,” according to ADVA and the university, potentially making PAM-4 a “promising approach for building low-cost, high-speed data center interconnect solutions.”

PAM-4 testing support has been gaining ground among test vendors, with Keysight Technologies recently expanding its PAM-4 offerings as well as Anritsu.

ADVA also is working on “5G xhaul” as part of a European effort to develop 5G systems. This effort is part of the Horizon 2020 project for 5G development and the 5G Public-Private Partnership, and is expected to result in a large-scale, live field trial in Bristol, England, scheduled for 2018.

Turkcell conducted its first live trial of LTE Broadcast technology at a basketball game, which the company said was a national first. Journalists were able to watch the live game from four different angles on LG G3 mobile devices. Turkcell plans next month to roll out what it is calling “4.5G” services with speeds of up to 375 megabits per second. The LTE Broadcast trial was done in partnership with Ericsson.

Keysight Technologies said new chipsets will enable it to develop oscilloscopes with more than 100-gigahertz bandwidth and lower noise floors, which it anticipates will be available in 2017. The oscilloscopes are said to have real-time and equivalent-time capabilities, and are based on its Indium Phosphide semiconductor technology.

Cobham Wireless is focusing on “Internet of Things” testing capabilities, and says its TM500 network test system can simulate tens of thousands of machine-to-machine devices for validating network performance for IoT applications. The company spotlighted the tester and a prototype 5G IoT traffic generator at Mobile World Congress.

-The Industrial Internet Consortium and Plattform Industrie 4.0 this week agreed to collaborate on their respective architecture frameworks to ensure interoperability. Both organizations focus on various aspects of industrial automation and related IoT applications, with the agreement seen as consolidating some of the technological efforts. The two groups also discussed possible collaboration in test beds and test infrastructures, standardization, architectures and business outcomes for the industrial Internet. IIC recently announced it is developing a time-sensitive test bed for IoT applications.

Bernd Leukert, member of SAP’s executive board, said aligning IIC and Plattform Industrie 4.0 testbed initiatives “will allow for a much smoother international cooperation between smaller companies and larger enterprise to test out use cases and to initiate standards.”

ABOUT AUTHOR

Kelly Hill
Kelly Hill
Kelly reports on network test and measurement, as well as the use of big data and analytics. She first covered the wireless industry for RCR Wireless News in 2005, focusing on carriers and mobile virtual network operators, then took a few years’ hiatus and returned to RCR Wireless News to write about heterogeneous networks and network infrastructure. Kelly is an Ohio native with a masters degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where she focused on science writing and multimedia. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian and The Canton Repository. Follow her on Twitter: @khillrcr