Attest Use Cases
Mandatory upgrades by SaaS vendors
SaaS vendors mandate application of patches every quarter. While these patches are tested by the SaaS vendors in their labs, there is no guarantee that the changes rolled in each quarter will not adversely impact organizations. This is because most organizations integrate SaaS applications with other SaaS or “on-premise” applications. Most SaaS applications provide hooks to extend the applications and organizations may have taken advantage and extended the native applications. So it is imperative that all organizations test the SaaS applications before deploying the mandatory patches. Given the two /three-week window to test, manual testing is not an option. Attest is used by its customers to test the Oracle Fusion and other SaaS applications’ quarterly patch releases and mitigate the risk of unforeseen system failures.
SOX and other internal audit testing and verification
Internal and statutory audits require extensive testing, validation and record keeping for audit trail purposes. Our customers have used Attest to execute many of the internal and SOX audit tests and used the automatic screen capture as audit evidence as well.
Monthly / Quarterly Enhancement deployments / Releases
Most companies have a defined Dev Ops procedure to migrate user requested system functionality enhancements or bug fixes to production. These changes could be low or high impact changes. They require that all impacted applications and business processes be tested as part of the release. Our customers have made business process assurance part of their Dev Ops process and use Attest to test and validate that all of their end-to-end business processes are not adversely impacted by the proposed changes.
Design and development assistance
As part of the Attest deployment, all of the end -to-end process are mapped in Attest. This process map that clearly shows the sequential flow of data through the system with all of the interacting applications and business transactions is an invaluable asset when designing changes and enhancements to the existing applications footprint. Attest has an impact Analysis module that can be used to identify all points of impact if any transaction in the application footprint is modified.
Any hardware / infrastructure / middleware changes
When there is a change to the any of the application hardware, infrastructure or middleware, all applications that use the changed hardware, infrastructure or middleware component have to be tested. Typically, this is very hard for those teams to do since they lack application expertise. The applications teams that have the expertise to test have no vested interest in testing. As a result, these changes are typically undertested and result in many production failures. Attest has been used do end to end application testing in support of hardware and middleware changes.
Patches provided by application vendors
Application vendors periodically recommend applying patches to packaged applications to rollout bug fixes, enhancements or security updates. Many organizations defer applying these patches because it is very cumbersome to test and validate that the patches do not adversely impact existing application functionality. Depending on the patch, the amount of testing needed may vary. Many organizations that have extended standard applications fear that application patches will break their customizations. The only way to validate the impact is to perform a comprehensive end to end tests. Our customers have extensively used Attest to test patches and identify points of failures. This helps them assess impact and make informed decisions on risk associated with applying patches.