On 23rd April 2003 on a press-briefing at Hotel Marriot Tverskaya DATA FORT together with Sun Microsystems and Oracle announced launching FORTEST site. This joint initiative will make it possible to debug and test software in remote access mode via Internet.

FORTEST is a specialized laboratory established on the basis of DATA FORT technological platform in a state-of-the-art data center, and intended to conduct testing, debugging, sizing and other operations necessary during software development and having direct impact on the quality of the finished product.

FORTEST is a real support for the partners Oracle and Sun having no sites of their own for solutions testing. Establishing the laboratory which can be used in remote mode, Oracle and Sun provide software engineers with new opportunities by reducing extra costs for software and hardware acquisition.

The results of the carried out research showed that a number of companies engaged in software engineering can’t afford spending money for state-of-the-art test stations. Besides, organizing of this station will require much work on equipment mounting, system and application software configuring and setup. All this results in project delay and makes its timeframes hardly to forecast. Moreover, engineers having the experience of operating these software complexes are required.

The idea of FORTEST project establishment appeared as a complex approach to the problem of software testing at the last stage of its development, performance evaluation and non-stop operation of the tested product.

FORTEST provides software engineers with remote access to the following services:

• Software development on Sun and Oracle platforms.
• Software testing.
• Registration of the bugs revealed while testing; monitoring of the debugging process.
• Access to version storage for saving project documentation and source texts.
• Backup and archiving of engineering resources with the option to recover if lost.
• Ensuring security and confidentiality of the data of the software engineering company.
• Consultations and assistance of FORTEST experts in software design, development and testing.
• Handing over project data to the customer in the format enabling reemploying after the project is completed.

Software engineers have an opportunity to conduct full-cycle testing and debugging of their products by using FORTEST software-hardware complex. The basis of this complex is the products of Oracle Corporation (DBMS Oracle 9i Database, Oracle 9i Application Server) and of Sun Microsystems (Sun Open Environment platform (Sun ONE), Solaris 9 operating system). DATA FORT provides data center infrastructure and security and stability of business processes.

The support provided by DATA FORT experts and by Oracle and Sun Microsystems makes it possible to get software products of the highest quality and to reduce time required for debugging and implementing.
This service might be most attractive for the companies developing software systems having high requirements as regards to reliability, sizing and performance.

Every user who visits FORTEST during the period from May 12 to November 12 will be able to use FORTEST services free of charge during 7 calendar days. In addition to this all FORTEST clients will have 10 % discount for hosting in DATA FORT Oracle database management system and/or Sun Microsystems equipment.