TesLA: Enabling multivendor Test Automation

The TesLA (Test Lab Automation) Alliance is an open industry alliance of IP test vendors working together to author, publish, support and implement standards that enable seamless and vendor agnostic Test Lab Automation.

TESLA STANDARDS 1.0 NOW OPEN FOR COMMENT

Wednesday February 25, 2009

On Wednesday February 25th, the TesLA Alliance (Test Lab Automation) held its second quarterly alliance meeting at the Ixia iSimCity facilities in Santa Clara, CA. The meeting was a great milestone personifying the momentum TesLA continues to build. The event was attended by as many as 14 organizations including members, CAB and interested non-members. These attendees were from various segments of the TesLA alliance – customers, members and interested non-members.

Here is a summary of the proceedings:

Agenda:

Provide membership at large, customer advisory board and interested non-members an overview and update of TesLA alliance activities over the past quarter and the roadmap for the next quarter. Key areas covered:

• New standards focus. Governance aligned accordingly
• TesLA Brand starting to establish. Marketing committee update.
• TesLA Standards activities kicked off in motion. Members called to Participate
• Roadmap ahead: Deliver Standards, establish certification, increase membership, continue brand building

Key Attendees:

• Full attendance by Customer Advisory Board: BT, F5, HP, Verizon
• Member attendees: Codenomicon, Fanfare Software, Gale Technologies, Ixia, Mu, Shunra, Qualisystems
• Non-member attendance: Agilent, Spirent, OnPath Technologies, Simena Networks

iSimCity hosted the TesLA quarterly meeting on February 25th, 2009. The event ran from 9:30 am to 3:00 pm.

Members:

Adam Stein, Vice President of Marketing, Mu Dynamics
Andy Huckridge, VP Marketing Codenomicon
Amiram Kehaty, Qualisystems
Dave Kresse, CEO, Mu Dynamics
Dave Sheaffer, VP Business Development, Fanfare Software
David Chartier, CEO, Codenomicon
Dean Hamilton, SVP of Engineering and Product Mgmt., CTO, Gale Technologies
Deepesh Arora, Director Product Management, Ixia
Eitan Lavie, Director of Engineering, Qualisystems
Jitin Dhanani, Business Development & Alliance Manager, Ixia
John Obermeyer, North American Sales Manager, Qualisystems
John Klhemm, VP Sales, Gale Technologies
Kingston Duffie, Founder and CTO, Fanfare Software
Kishore Bhamidipati, Sr. Director, Product Management and Marketing, Gale Technologies
Matt Reid, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Shunra
Neal Roche, VP Marketing Strategic Development, Ixia
Patrick Deloulay, Director of Engineering, Gale Technologies

Customer Advisory Board

Brian Buege, Head of BT's Test Strategy and Development, BT
Keith Kidd, Director of Network and Technology Labs, Verizon
Steve Michell, Senior Test Manager, F5 Networks
Vincent Mendoza, Master Technical Consultant (TC), HP

Non-members

Larry Cantwell, CTO, OnPath Technologies
Neil Anderson, vice president of Global Services. Spirent Communication
Peter Atanasovski, Technical Consultant, Agilent
Sezen Uysal, President, Simena Networks
Todd Law, Product Manager, Agilent

Presentations:

• An update on TesLA activities in past Quarter by Deepesh Arora
• Customer perspective by Keith Kidd, Brian Buege, Steve Mitchell
• TesLA Marketing Committee update by Adam Stein
• TesLA Plugin Standard Committee update by Eitan Lavie
• TesLA Lab Standard Committee update by Patrick Deloulay

Round Table – open discussion:

• All Tier1 members and CAB need to give name of their representatives on BoD.
• Standard committees need to look at pbwiki or ning for notes taking. Google docs may not be most effective.
• Need to have detail how the standard gets ratified, voted for/against
• The process of forming the standards should be made available online. This already holds true for members participating in the Standards committee. Every member can and should join the committees and participate in weekly meetings
• Focus should be on ‘verification’ initially and then ‘certification’ over long term. Plug-fest might be a way to start cheap and most effective.
• TesLA promotional material is available on website for members to use at trade fairs including Toolapalooza.
• Also, at-cost booth available for InterOp for TesLA members. This would be shared by different TesLA members who do not have presence at Interop to market TesLA and have presence themselves.
• Members need to volunteer for reference implementation of initial set of standards scheduled to be published in June.

Action items from open discussion:

• Names of BoD representatives from current Tier1 and CAB to be filed for annual report of TesLA alliance.
• Each committee can make their choice when to switch to pbwiki or ning or gdocs.
• Every Standards committee should have a Test Plan included as part of the standards definition
• Andy Huckridge of Codenomicon elected Chair of the certification committee. He will come up with ideas and how we want to approach the challenge of verifying that an implementation is indeed compliant.
• Neal Roche or Adam Stein from TesLA Marketing committee to be contacted for the Interop booth.

Goals for Next Quarterly Meeting:

• Board of Directors appointed
• Membership increase
• Marketing awareness via more social media
• Standards Draft ready for review by membership
• Certification committee established and proposal for a certification mechanism ready

Videos, photographs and presentations from the day, please Click here.