Abebooks Selects Agitar Software to Drive Quality of World’s Largest Online Book Marketplace

Enterprise developer testing solution boosts functionality, performance, and security in processing of 50 million books from 12,000 booksellers.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 22, 2004 – Agitar Software, the leader in enterprise developer testing, today announced that Abebooks, the world’s largest online marketplace for books, has selected Agitar’s products and services as part of a company-wide software quality initiative designed to improve the functionality, performance, and security of its e-commerce transaction system.

Abebooks provides tools and services to more than 12,000 booksellers for managing inventory and selling books through its global Web sites and through its strategic partners such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The United Nations named Abebooks as one of the planet’s top e-business sites at the World Summit Awards in Geneva last year.

Abebooks has deployed Agitar’s Agitator and the Agitar Management Dashboard as well as related support and implementation services for all of its development staff. Abebooks is using Agitar’s products to create unit test assets for its inventory management software, called HomeBase, which helps booksellers – as well as Abebooks – manage listings for over 50 million books.

"Our database of books is one of the fastest growing e-commerce systems in use, and it has to deliver financial-grade security," said Jayson Minard, CIO for Abebooks. "We have embraced a developer testing program to safely upgrade our core software assets. Agitator has already paid for itself by finding software issues that would have been costly to Abebooks if left undetected. Using Agitator, our development team has taken further ownership over quality with marked improvements in our newly produced software, which is more maintainable and is produced with far fewer errors."

"Abebooks is taking a serious and rigorous approach to ensuring that their e-commerce software systems are of the highest quality," says Jerry Rudisin, CEO of Agitar Software. "By placing quality first, Abebooks will be able to provide the best possible service to their customers while continuing with their rapid business expansion. In the process they will significantly reduce costs across the entire software development lifecycle."

Abebooks Executive Speaks at JavaOne on Agitar
Development expert and Abebooks CIO Jayson Minard will be speaking at JavaOne in San Francisco on June 28 about how he applied Agitar solutions at Abebooks to implement a company-wide software quality initiative. Minard will discuss the implementation of their developer testing program, and the business benefits that the quality initiative brings to Abebooks. Minard is a noted Java development authority, who formerly was the chief architect for the Java Business Unit at Borland. His talk, "Improving Developer Testing using Agitator," will be at 6:30pm on Monday, June 28th at the JavaOne Pavilion at the Moscone Center.

About Agitar’s Products
Agitator intelligently exercises Java code to discover its behavior and presents observations to the developer. Developers can convert Agitator’s valid observations into unit tests with a single click. This unique process, called "software agitation," helps developers create thorough sets of reusable unit tests. Agitation lets developers edit and enhance their code with confidence, helping them prevent errors as they write or modify their programs.

The Agitar Management Dashboard provides unprecedented data, visibility, and control over the developer testing process. The Management Dashboard lets development teams set testing targets based on risk, resource availability, and schedules. It gives in-depth reports on test quality with details by project, package, class, and method.

About Abebooks
Abebooks, a private company based in Victoria, BC Canada, with offices in Düsseldorf, Germany, is the world’s largest online marketplace for books. Abebooks makes it simple and safe to find and buy — or list and sell — books online. Bookbuyers love the variety of over 50 million new used, rare, and out-of-print books offered by more than 12,000 independent booksellers. Booksellers love Abebooks for providing tools to help them succeed online, including options for selling via strategic partners (Amazon, Barnes & Noble), and four sites to reach global markets. For more information, please visit http://www.abebooks.com.

 

About Agitar Technologies, Inc.
Using unprecedented JUnit Generation and software agitation techniques, and Java functional testing coverage capabilities, Agitar Technologies enables the enterprise to save time and money, releasing Java applications faster with fewer bugs. The “AgitarOne” product family enables software teams to create, use, and manage the extensive set of unit tests needed to be truly agile. Customers have cut legacy maintenance efforts by 50%, released new applications 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut the cost of finding and fixing post-release bugs by 90%. Agitar Technologies is a privately-held company headquartered in Cranston, RI. For more information visit www.agitar.com.