Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor Original Software partners with Green Hat, a provider of automated testing technology for integration and SOA, to deliver automated testing system for multi-tiered applications that utilise SOA.

The integrated platform reportedly allows customers to use the total Software Quality system across the UI, web services and database layers and the SOA infrastructure, with the code free functionality.

Gartner notes that through 2010, 60% of unplanned downtime for SOA-based, loosely-coupled applications will be the result of application failure, compared to 40% for non-SOA-based applications.

Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software, said: “A number of our key clients and prospects working on SOA initiatives want a quality solution that extends the benefits of GUI testing to the entire integrated application.

“This alliance with Green Hat gives Original Software an important additional route to market and enables us to deliver a best of breed solution across the user interface, database layer, services, third party systems and middleware that will prevent unexpected costs and delays as critical applications become more complex.”

Original Software said that, as the ERP vendors introduce more services into their platforms, customers must go beyond GUI testing to assure the function and performance of the total system.

Gartner, observes that when too much manual work is involved, it causes an inability to stay current with patches to packaged software and to deliver well-tested applications.

Peter Cole, president and CTO of Green Hat, said: “BPM project teams who want GUI testing as an element of a more complex integration and SOA testing framework have asked us to make this part of our offering. This alliance will give them a single point of contact for all their automated testing requirements.”