Managed support services provider of the year – Exactpro Systems

Iosif Itkin, Exactpro Systems

With increasing regulatory and business pressures, firms are looking for the most efficient ways of ensuring the quality and stability of the platforms on which their products and services depend. Quality assurance (QA), therefore, is a vital part of operational activities. Effective validation and verification processes are best achieved through independent software testing, carried out by a third-party specialist that is unbiased and able to provide objective information about systems in a useful format.

Exactpro specialises in providing managed software testing services for mission-critical financial markets technology. The company focuses on functional and non-functional testing of systems that process wholesale financial products. Clients include global systemically important financial market institutions and utilities – such as the London Stock Exchange, Australian Securities Exchange and interdealer broker Tradition. 

The company builds software to test software, and offers a test automation solution with a wide coverage and a focus on systems’ maintainability and sustainability. This helps clients mitigate operational risks in trading, clearing, risk management, market surveillance, securities data distribution, post-trade activities and other areas. Risks associated with different business flows and the use of different technologies are addressed through a diversity of testing techniques and automation solutions. These apply a variety of data analysis and machine learning techniques to improve the thoroughness and efficiency of automated functional and non-functional testing under load (expected normal and peak usage).

Exactpro follows a set of core principles to ensure it provides the best testing for its clients. First, it approaches software testing as relentless learning, investing significantly in research and development and continuous improvement. It values expertise – its team has a depth of experience in working with a wide range of financial instruments and understanding the specifics of their lifecycles and parameters. The company develops bespoke test tools, enhancing them with customised dictionaries and simulators tailored to specific clients’ needs. It takes a holistic end-to-end approach to testing, as most defects tend to occur at the confluence of different business flows and system components. Notably, it releases its tools into the open-source community, which further ensures their high quality. 

As part of its continuous research and innovation, over the past year Exactpro created a robust test automation framework aimed at distributed ledger technology-based post-trade systems, and improved the QA services it provides in cloud-based and hybrid environments.

The judges said:

• Exactpro is tightly focused on independent software testing and quality assurance, with extensive tools and test library.
• Many operational resilience events have been caused by issues when migrating to new platforms. Exactpro deals with this risk and provides a source of quality assurance.
• Rigorously developed testing tools, technologies and processes.

Iosif Itkin, co-chief executive officer and co-founder, Exactpro, says:

“We are honoured and thank Risk.net for this valuable recognition. We build software to test software for exchanges, clearing houses, security depositories and technology vendors in 20 countries on all six continents. The best software-testing instrument is the human brain, and we are very proud of our team at Exactpro and their incredible work and relentless effort to ensure the highest quality and resilience of platforms that underpin global financial markets.”

Read more about the Risk Technology Awards 2020 winners

 

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