IBM Case Studies Pearson VUE saves time and money by automating code build and deployment

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	Pearson VUE saves time and money by automating code build and deployment IBM

Pearson VUE saves time and money by automating code build and deployment

IBM

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries	Education
Applicable Functions	Business Operation
Use Cases	Infrastructure Inspection
Services	Software Design & Engineering Services
Challenge	Pearson VUE, the world's largest testing organization, was struggling with time-consuming manual release and deployment processes. The process involved dozens of steps and was causing frustration among the development and operations teams due to their inability to move code to production quickly. When a production issue arose, it was difficult to determine whether the code or the deployment was the problem. Given the nature of Pearson VUE's business, reducing production issues was essential. For instance, any problem in production could affect the speed at which a customer could grant a candidate a license to practice medicine. Read More
About Customer	Pearson VUE is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and delivers millions of high-stakes tests each year for customers in the licensure, certification, academic admissions, regulatory, and government testing marketplaces. As the world’s largest testing organization, Pearson VUE works to stay agile and competitive. The company is constantly trying to innovate and improve its products and services to stay ahead of the competition. The business intelligence (BI) development team at Pearson VUE, led by Guy Speier, senior group manager, plays a crucial role in this process. Read More
Solution	To address the challenge, Guy Speier and Mark Muellner, senior developer at Pearson VUE, used IBM® UrbanCode™ Deploy software to automate their group’s software deployment processes. The group had made three previous attempts to automate deployment, investing hundreds of hours of work with inadequate results. However, with IBM UrbanCode Deploy software, significant progress was made in just 35 hours. Within three weeks, two out of the three major software components were 95 percent automated. The new solution allowed Muellner to create a schedule to automatically pull code changes from a repository, build them, and then push them to an integration and regression testing environment. The entire process from start to finish was automated, reducing dozens of manual steps to a single step where a developer checks code into the repository. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Infrastructure Inspection

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

Challenge

Pearson VUE, the world's largest testing organization, was struggling with time-consuming manual release and deployment processes. The process involved dozens of steps and was causing frustration among the development and operations teams due to their inability to move code to production quickly. When a production issue arose, it was difficult to determine whether the code or the deployment was the problem. Given the nature of Pearson VUE's business, reducing production issues was essential. For instance, any problem in production could affect the speed at which a customer could grant a candidate a license to practice medicine.

About Customer

Pearson VUE is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and delivers millions of high-stakes tests each year for customers in the licensure, certification, academic admissions, regulatory, and government testing marketplaces. As the world’s largest testing organization, Pearson VUE works to stay agile and competitive. The company is constantly trying to innovate and improve its products and services to stay ahead of the competition. The business intelligence (BI) development team at Pearson VUE, led by Guy Speier, senior group manager, plays a crucial role in this process.

Solution

To address the challenge, Guy Speier and Mark Muellner, senior developer at Pearson VUE, used IBM® UrbanCode™ Deploy software to automate their group’s software deployment processes. The group had made three previous attempts to automate deployment, investing hundreds of hours of work with inadequate results. However, with IBM UrbanCode Deploy software, significant progress was made in just 35 hours. Within three weeks, two out of the three major software components were 95 percent automated. The new solution allowed Muellner to create a schedule to automatically pull code changes from a repository, build them, and then push them to an integration and regression testing environment. The entire process from start to finish was automated, reducing dozens of manual steps to a single step where a developer checks code into the repository.

Impact #1	The implementation of IBM UrbanCode Deploy software has drastically reduced the time it takes to get a code change to production. Previously, it took Pearson VUE an average of one day to get a code change to production, and in the worst cases, it took up to two weeks. With IBM UrbanCode Deploy software, changes can be made to production within hours, and deployment takes about five minutes.
Impact #2	Automated releases save hours of staff work per release, and automated testing drastically decreases production issues that can take hundreds of hours to fix.

Impact #1

The implementation of IBM UrbanCode Deploy software has drastically reduced the time it takes to get a code change to production. Previously, it took Pearson VUE an average of one day to get a code change to production, and in the worst cases, it took up to two weeks. With IBM UrbanCode Deploy software, changes can be made to production within hours, and deployment takes about five minutes.

Impact #2

Automated releases save hours of staff work per release, and automated testing drastically decreases production issues that can take hundreds of hours to fix.

Benefit #1	Reduced time to get a code change to production from one day to a few hours.
Benefit #2	Reduced deployment time from one day to about five minutes.
Benefit #3	Significant annual cost reductions due to automated releases and testing.

Benefit #1

Reduced time to get a code change to production from one day to a few hours.

Benefit #2

Reduced deployment time from one day to about five minutes.

Benefit #3

Significant annual cost reductions due to automated releases and testing.

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Overview

Pearson VUE saves time and money by automating code build and deployment

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit