Testing Times
July 2005
Testing times: how a life-changing decision turned StarBase into a thriving IT business and towards a great future as a Mercury Titanium Partner.
Stephen Davis, MD of StarBase challenged hostile market conditions by re-focusing his business on load & performance testing. It was a brave decision in which his business could sink or swim...
Stephen Davis, MD of StarBase, a Mercury Titanium Partner and one of the UK's leading vendors of automated testing services is modest about his achievements, but his story provides a text-book example of how to succeed in challenging market conditions. In 1992, frustrated by the limitations imposed upon the development of innovative MIS solutions within the corporate insurance and financial sectors, he decided to side-step office-politics by starting up his own IT services company. StarBase is built upon a sincere quality ethic that prioritises real customer needs over management egos. As an independent advisor to corporations, Davis felt empowered to specify the changes that would resolve challenging IT issues and promote the best standards in IT practice.
The business was flourishing, StarBase became an IBM Partner, but as a small-player had negligible influence over the strategic direction of its global associate. Then a black cloud overshadowed the market as the focus on Y2K projects took a lot of people out of the business. Stephen Davis made a calculated decision to concentrate his business interests on load testing. He explains: "It was a succeed or fail situation. The high level of skills within my existing team allowed us to easily adapt to load testing and there was clearly a need for this service within the large systems environment, yet few players had entered the market. It was the best fit I could identify for the future of my business and it paid off."
Davis first encountered Mercury in 1996 when he worked on a project to support the launch of the Prudential Bank, who in 1998 became Egg:. He was impressed by the power and performance of Mercury's Business Technology Optimisation tools. In 2000, it was therefore a natural progression for StarBase to Partner with Mercury and focus exclusively upon the Mercury tool-set. "Our strategy was to develop a new methodology and deliver additional functionality that would enhance the performance of Mercury's Application Development tools including LoadRunner. Since then, we've become more involved with other Mercury Application Development and Management tools including Business Availability Centre (BAC- formerly Topaz)," explains Stephen Davis.
StarBase is now one of Mercury's top-performing Partners and was awarded Titanium status in recognition of its contribution to sales and high standards of training and customer service.
"The partnership between StarBase and Mercury is built on trust," comments Davis. "It takes time and the right mix of people to forge successful business relationships. Yes, there has been a learning curve but I believe that both parties have reaped the benefits.
By sharing viewpoints we've created new sales opportunities that enhance our mutual business operations. Mercury is always open to new ideas and has provided a highly skilled Partner Manager who is very responsive to our needs and has a flexible approach to dealing with business challenges. We've also been encouraged to build good relationships with other contacts within the Mercury sales and professional service teams. This makes us feel less of an outsider and more like a trusted member of the Mercury team."
"StarBase is an ideal Partner for Mercury solutions," comments Andrew Patterson, Partner Manager at Mercury UK. "They really believe in delivering a quality service, backed by strong training and employee development, including active participation in the Mercury Certification Programme. These priorities are clearly reflected in the StarBase's rapid growth, and the company's financial contribution to Mercury's own success
"Our business is all about quality of people," confirms Davis. "We invest heavily in training our people to use proven tools. Our methodology isn't achieved by magic, it's the result of hard effort and great teamwork by skilled people using a modular approach. This is one thing that really bothers me about the trend towards offshore outsourcing. Let's face it, the trend is here to stay and we must evolve around it, but my feeling is that there will be a backlash when customers fail to receive the quality of service they had expected. Quality comes at a price and it's seldom found in the bargain basement."
Looking to the future, Stephen Davis plans to expand the reach of StarBase's existing core business in Application Development and Application Management while exploring the potential for future development in the IT Governance (ITG) arena. "Year-on-year, we're seeing that more companies see a real need for load testing. It used to be 'Yes, that's something we should do.' Now we're hearing much more: "This is something we MUST do!' We're also seeing an upward trend in the demand for monitoring applications. That's got to be good for business," comments Davis. " What we must remember is that in the past mistakes have been made with functional testing and some customers still need to be convinced that their investment will be rewarded. At StarBase, we give customers the reassurance of proven performance by highly-trained IT specialists. Everything is thought through in the development project life cycle. By developing multiple scripts, within a modular framework we manage the functional testing process to ensure success at every phase through to completion."
StarBase is a success story that highlights the benefits of focusing on the traditional values of quality, customer focus and the mutual support of trusted business partners.
"Within the company, there's a general feeling that StarBase is a safe pair of hands in which to place Mercury solutions," comments Andrew Patterson. "It's more than the ability to close more deals, it's about sharing a business ethic that puts the customer first in everything we do."
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