Original Software has announced the availability of an upgrade for its popular manual testing solution, TestDrive-Assist. Due to increasing pressure on CIOs to reduce risk on mission-critical applications, Original Software has experienced considerable demand to extend its support to the IBM mainframe, the company said.

TestDrive-Assist is designed to help business analysts, QA teams, and user-acceptance testers in detecting and reproducing errors, sharing knowledge, and producing audit-quality diagnostics and reporting. With less than a 10-minute learning curve, users are up-and-running instantly and workload can be reduced by more than a third, the company says.

"Since its initial launch, TestDrive-Assist has supported modern Web and client-server interfaces but we have been surprised at the level of demand for also testing legacy mainframe applications. While the rate of development on legacy applications has dropped in favor of Web interfaces, many of the worlds most critical applications are still based on legacy systems, and any changes which cannot be properly tested represent an unacceptable level of risk to today's CIO," says Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software.

The latest version of TestDrive-Assist extends its support to cover 3270 applications, the emulation used on IBM mainframes, otherwise known as the zSeries.  A single solution can now be used for assisting with manual testing of Windows and Web applications as well as legacy iSeries and mainframe green screens. There is full support for the mainframe including screen and input capture, performance statistics, spell checking, test status audit tracking, test plan import, results storage and reporting.

Original Software will be exhibiting at Star East in Orlando, Fla., this week, in Booth 51, where it will be promoting the latest version of Test Drive-Assist and the launch of ManualTesting.com, a community site with a wealth of free downloadable resources designed to aid users involved with manual testing.

Existing TestDrive-Assist customers on a current maintenance contract will receive this upgrade free of charge. It can be downloaded from Original Software's customer site. Trials of the mainframe-enabled product can be requested from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

About Original Software

Original Software offers automated software testing and quality assurance solutions that deliver tangible benefits across a wide range of IT and application environments. As a recognized innovator, Original Software's goal is to reduce business risk and improve application time to market for IT departments through the development of class-leading automated solutions.

Over the last 10 years, more than 400 organizations operating in 25 countries have come to depend on Original Software for their software testing solutions.  Current users range from small software development shops to major multinationals, including Cargill Global Financial Solutions, Circuit City Stores, Pfizer Pharmaceutical (Ireland), DHL, Coca-Cola, Skandia and hundreds of others. Original Software operates central offices near Chicago and London. Its solutions can be obtained through these offices or through a network of qualified and knowledgeable business partners throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australasia and the Americas. For more information, visit http://www.origsoft.com/ or http://www.manualtesting.com/.