Year 2000 test environments - Industry Trend or Event - Brief Article

Software Magazine, Oct 15, 1997

As Sundstrand Aerospace and Commercial Union Insurance both discovered, establishing an effective test environment takes major planning and implementation effort. Firms can also incur hardware costs as they work to gain additional computing power.

Although a parallel testing environment requires the purchase or rental of additional hardware, it makes sense. Setting up a separate test environment will minimize schedule conflicts and interference with production systems. While Sundstrand used separate CPUs and tools for its conversion and development effort, Commercial Union had to meld a special test environment with its existing production system because of special application test requirements.

To help cut some of the hardware costs associated with testing efforts, UniKix Technologies has introduced software that provides a mainframe-compatible test environment on a Unix server.

According to UniKix, testing and conversion can place an additional 20% load on mainframe systems, forcing many companies to upgrade their existing hardware in order to maintain required throughput levels. Using Open 2000 software and a Unix server can save such companies as much as $1 million in their Y2K and testing costs, says the vendor, because its software and a Unix server cost significantly less than upgrading an existing mainframe or purchasing a new one.