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Welcome to the StackSafe's Newsletter, a publication in which you'll read about our latest happenings and get a sneak peek into what's coming up. Check out the news below.

DEMO Wrap-Up

As many of you know, StackSafe launched our flagship product, Test Center, at DEMO 2008 to a very positive reception. We received many accolades from the business press in attendance, many of who called Test Center one of the more viable solutions presented at this year's show.

Dean Takahashi, formerly of the San Jose Mercury News' Tech Talk Blog, looks at how Test Center aims to reduce "patch and pray."

Joshua Jaffe general manager of Tech Confidential ranked StackSafe's Test Center as one of his Top 10 DEMO 2008 startups, saying, "I don't know much about IT infrastructure but the costs of downtime are obvious."

Lance Ulanoff, editor-in-chief of PC Magazine gives Test Center a 5/5 for feasibility on the publications AppScout Blog and notes that there is "no other product that addresses this critical multi-billion-dollar problem."

Michael Miller, who blogs for PC Magazine's Forward Thinking blog picked Test Center as one of his favorite products at DEMO 2008, noting that "Every large company I know has to deal with patches, updates, etc. and make sure they work right, and this is a great concept; and if this prevents unplanned down time, it could fill a read need."

All-in-all, it was a great show and an unbelievable launch, thanks in large part to the excellent presentation given by our CEO, Loren Burnett, which you can watch it here.

What's a Pink Elephant?

While in attendance at the 12th annual International IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition, StackSafe™ Test Center was named the winner of the 2008 Pink Elephant Innovation of the Year award. (To the left is a picture of our award) The Innovation of the year award is presented to a recently developed product or service that offers the most innovative solution for ITIL practitioners. Test Center was developed in direct response to an unaddressed market need: the staging and testing of changes within IT Operations to enable smoother change deployment and reduced downtime and we are thrilled to be recognized by Pink Elephant for making a change for the better in this area.

In addition to winning the Innovation of the Year award, the conference proved to be a great venue for Test Center. We had many interesting conversations with fellow attendees about the value of ITIL to the IT organization and the relative difficulty in getting leaders and organizations to buy into the changes that come with implementing the best practices.

ITIL Knowledge

Organizations that adhere to ITIL's Change and Release Management best practice are better positioned to minimize downtime, reduce the frequency of negative change impact and enjoy a smoother Change Management process. In response to increased interest in ITIL and the benefits it provides, StackSafe has created an ITIL Knowledge Center, which provides resources and best practices for organizations seeking to improve their adoption and processes around ITIL.

StackSafe's Knowledge Center focuses on the role of pre-production testing within ITIL and how companies can improve IT Service Management (ITSM) and reduce downtime by leveraging these best practices. Also, on the StackSafe blog, Dennis Powell, Senior Product Manager, outlines the benefits and steps necessary to move to ITIL V3, which further aligns IT with the business. In his post he discusses how V3 makes a significant change in terms of content and structure from a focus on the tactical processes of service management to a more business-focused IT approach.

Analyst Reaction

In addition to introducing StackSafe Test Center to the media, we also spent time talking to the analyst community about the technology and the market need. Below, we've outlined a quick summary of some of the analysts' perspectives.

Gartner Group provided their "First Take" on StackSafe Test Center shortly after our launch at DEMO. The report notes that most IT Infrastructure and Operations groups lack the rigor necessary in their change testing to determine optimal availability levels. Read the Report Here

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) included StackSafe Test Center in a report about using pre-deployment testing to accelerate the impact of ITIL in the enterprise. The report espouses the need for "integration testing," defined as testing that focuses on the interactions between an application and other elements of the production environment. The report cites Test Center as a solution to implementing integration testing as its "..focus on IT Operations puts testing in the hands of experts that understand the business applications from the day-to-day perspective."
Read the Report Here

Finally, Ptak, Noel, & Associates noted that while "Everyone KNOWS that patches, updates, and configuration changes, etc... should be thoroughly tested... most IT operations teams cannot afford dedicated, accurate test bed environments." The group found that Test Center answers this need through a "solid, easy-to-use, highly efficient, low risk, flexible way to 'experiment' and 'play' with a virtualized image of a production environment." The group also predicts rapid market penetration and acceptance from enterprise IT departments.
Read the Report Here

Webinar: Improving Change Management via Better Testing for IT Operations

We recently participated in a Webinar, hosted by Ecora Software, about improving change management in IT organizations through better testing and analysis processes. Referring our study of more than 400 IT Operations professionals, Dennis Powell, a Senior Product Manager here at StackSafe, spoke about the various testing techniques and usage among IT departments.

The discussion worked through the following points:

The different classifications of IT testing users: "Testing Neophytes," "The Unfortunate Middle," and "Test Leaders"
The impact inadequate testing has on IT operations and the business as a whole
How testing against a portion of the stack compares against testing against the entire infrastructure
The importance of "matching" your testing environment to the live software stack

If you missed this webinar, be sure to look at our webinar page to ensure you don't repeat history!

Webinar: Improving Change Management through Pre-Deployment Testing

We also participated in a webinar hosted by Enterprise Management Associates that addressed how IT operations teams can utilize pre-production testing to minimize downtime caused by changes. Julie Craig of EMA and our own Dennis Powell discussed how to successfully simplify the task of predicting the impact of changes to an organization's software infrastructure. Detailed talking points included:

The difference in the testing capabilities and needs of software development teams and IT operations
How the testing of changes fits into the ITIL V2 and V3 frameworks
The impact of increased distributed applications, such as SOA, on changes and testing
The link between the testing of changes and reductions in production problems
The cost and management challenges associated with traditional staging and testing strategies
How virtualization technologies are being implemented to improve staging and testing solutions for IT operations teams

If you weren't able to join us for this webinar, check out our webinar page and pencil us in for the next one!

RIM Outage: How Critical is Email?

If you're a (Cr)Blackberry owner, you certainly experienced some pain on February 11, when Research In Motion's (RIM) Blackberry service went down for several hours. Other than a lot of twitchy thumbs and anxious tech workers, it's highly likely that the outage also caused hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in productivity losses.

So what caused this outage? The odds are, like so many of the high-profile outages in 2007, that an IT change caused the problem. Not only does damage reputations with customers, but it's something that could be avoided, if only organizations providing mission critical applications would adopt better testing measures by IT Operations.

In our blog post on the topic, we covered off on the four major points that Blackberry, Blackberry competitors and end-users can take from this:

Based on the reaction to the most recent mobile messaging outage, end users clearly feel that email access is a mission critical, always on IT service. If your internally managed email system goes down, it may not make the New York Times, but your business and users will be negatively impacted.
If you are an outsourced infrastructure provider, the stakes are immeasurably higher, with Web 2.0 demanding more availability. This requirement for greater uptime applies not only to Web 2.0 organizations, but all outsourced infrastructure providers.
If you are evaluating outsourcing an application, IT service or software infrastructure, know the top four questions to ask your outsourced infrastructure provider about uptime and availability.
As this example shows, invest to find a better way to understand the impact of changes to your software infrastructure. As a provider of IT services or infrastructure, you don't want to be stuck in the unfortunate middle.

Upcoming Events and Tradeshows

Members of the StackSafe team will be attending, exhibiting or presenting at some industry shows in the near future. If you’ll be there as well, please say hello.

May: Gartner Midsize Enterprise Summit (East)
June: Gartner Infrastructure, Operations and Management Summit

StackSafe in the News

Beware! You are about to encounter a mass amount of StackSafe news! Launching Test Center at DEMO generated a lot interest and we're excited to share some of the news with you. Check out for yourself what a few of the experts are saying and see what a wave we've made! Still looking for more StackSafe News? Track all of our media coverage in our News Room.

Getting a Grip On Change Management
EnterpriseITPlanet.com, March 5, 2008

EnterpriseITPlanet.com discusses the importance of Test Center and announces StackSafe's Innovation of the Year award win at Pink Elephant.

Stacksafe Test Center
ZDNet, January 30, 2008

Dan Kusnetzky summarizes his conversation with StackSafe's Andrew Gross and Jonah Paransky about Test Center's need in the IT industry

Startup StackSafe Offers Virtualization To Test Software Changes
InformationWeek, January 30, 2008

Charlie Babcock of InformationWeek offers an overview of Test Center and explains why the product is desperately needed within the market space.

DEMO08 Day 1: Roundup
Somewhat Frank, January 29, 2008

Industry expert Frank Gruber highlights technologies unveiled at DEMO, including StackSafe's flagship product, Test Center.