These awards are decided by the QA Financial editorial team and they are designed to celebrate innovation and excellence in software quality assurance. We began our awards review process in March this year. Companies were invited to apply and the review process was conducted by our editorial panel. We asked for entries that could be verified by on-the-record customer interviews, and we spoke to those clients in person, on-the-record. There are no shortage of awards for the IT industry, we know. But our have a clear focus on those on-the-record verifications from clients, whose stories are – after all – the stories that describe what is really driving the marketplace for quality assurance services for financial software. One key driver is that quality must be embedded in the entire software development life-cycle, and that its value can be determined and managed. There has to be a measurable RoI from the up-front investment banks and other financial firms are making in the technologies required for digital transformation. The rise of test automation and the adoption of Agile and DevOps platforms are consistent across other industry verticals, aside from finance. But the financial services firms face the key requirement of embedding compliance requirements in software development. This is reflected in our awards, notably in the citations for our overall winner this year, Capgemini [and its clients, including RBC and ANZ], and for QASymphony [and its client Transamerica]. We have the detailed story on how test automation tool vendor Sauce Labs helped transform app delivery at Charles Schwab Intelligent portfolios, the exciting robo advisory business of the giant Charles Schwab Group We have also highlighted stories which we believe highlight some of the current challenges in quality assurance among different types of financial firms: exchanges that must have software that responds in microseconds [see our award for Zensoft and its project for Bombay Stock exchange]; private banks looking to make a leap forward in digital services [Validata and its work for Bank of Singapore; retail banks trying to keep pace with customer demand for mobile services [Quinnox and its customer Mashreq Bank]. You can read the awards citations below:
The winners
(Click links for articles)
Quality assurance and testing services vendor of the year (Overall) – Capgemini
Test automation tool vendor of the year – Sauce Labs
Quality assurance management platform vendor of the year – QASymphony
Performance and load testing vendor of the year – Eggplant
Open-source quality assurance and testing services vendor of the year – Perfecto
Specialist QA vendor of the year – Validata
Mobile app quality assurance and testing services vendor of the year – Quinnox
User experience testing solution vendor of the year – Panaya
IT transformation project of the year – Zensoft