Sabre Travel Network Streamlines Mobile Application Testing Using Perfecto Mobile’s MobileCloud

Ensuring Mobile Quality to Meet Traveler Needs

As a leading travel technology company, Sabre has embraced mobile travel capabilities to deliver travel information, notifications and change support to the traveler throughout the travel experience. Mobility provides huge opportunity in travel, and must meet the high performance standards for quality and reliability expected to ensure that it can be relied upon by the traveler. Recognizing the increasing importance of mobile to travel, Sabre has embraced the Perfecto Mobile MobileCloud Platform to help ensure devices across all mobile networks are supported and are fully automated across the business process. Through Perfecto, the integrity of Sabre’s solutions can be assured to meet traveler needs.

Sabre Holdings: Powering the World's Travel Industry 

Sabre Holdings is the world’s leading travel technology company, providing innovative distribution and technology solutions for the global travel and tourism industry. The company serves travel agencies, corporations, travelers, airlines, hotels, and rail, car, cruise and tour operator companies through its four businesses: Sabre Airline Solutions, Sabre Hospitality Solutions, Sabre Travel Network (including GetThere) and Travelocity (including lastminute.com and Zuji). Headquartered in Southlake, Texas, Sabre has 10,000 employees in 60 countries around the world, and is privately owned by TPG and Silverlake.

Business Travelers Go Mobile on GetThere® 

Powering the corporate travel industry, GetThere®, a division of Sabre Travel Network, provides online booking tools and travel management services to more than 1,000 corporations, including half of the Fortune 200. To meet the needs of corporate travelers “on the go”, Sabre has "mobilized" its online applications to provide travel booking and management capabilities on mobile devices, within the realm of a company’s travel policy. The pilot for this enterprise mobility initiative is GetThere Mobile, which provides travelers with one-click access to trip itineraries, online check-in, flight status and more from their Blackberry, iPhone or Android device.

Optimizing the Mobile Application Development Lifecycle

Sabre's vision for GetThere Mobile is to offer high-quality, easy-to-use mobile applications that empower business travelers, improve communications with corporate travel departments/agents, and reduce costs. To ensure an optimal user experience for its global customer base regardless of the handset/tablet type, operating system, screen size or network location, Sabre's mobile application development strategy is based on a comprehensive and proactive testing process.

Using Perfecto Mobile’s technology, Sabre's project team has begun to implement this strategy for the GetThere Mobile pilot. Key steps include refining the testing methodology and processes, creating test scripts that can be re-used across mobile platforms and business units, automation of at least 90% of mobile regression test cases, and enabling access to all devices used by their customers. Once these building blocks are in place, Sabre plans to extend this model to its other business units, mobile websites and applications. 

"Several teams within Sabre are using Perfecto Mobile's MobileCloud solution to build services, technological infrastructure, knowledge and understanding that will eventually serve all Sabre business units in developing, deploying, testing and monitoring mobile apps," said Rosauro Manansala, Senior Principal System Architect in charge of Sabre's enterprise mobility project.

The Challenge: Increase Mobile Testing Coverage while Reducing Time and Costs

Prior to Perfecto Mobile, Sabre's mobile testing was managed manually, using Device Anywhere, with procured devices. Recognizing the rising demand for mobile, Sabre sought a solution to more efficiently test and troubleshoot the ever-growing number of devices and operating systems on the market, while at the same time reducing the associated procurement costs.

Automation of Sabre's mobile testing was vital to enabling more comprehensive testing on a greater variety of platforms in less time. Automation would also allow Sabre to quickly respond to new trends and emerging platforms (e.g., tablets) in the dynamic mobile market, which in turn improves its speed to market. With Sabre's global operations, testing in diverse geographic locations and on different carrier networks also was a "must." In addition, from a support perspective, responding to errors in a timely manner was challenging since Sabre did not have access to the actual handsets and often had to rely on the user to capture screenshots showing the bug. "Even for operating systems that we support, people pick and choose features for their OS, so no two users are the same," explained Manansala.  

The Solution: Perfecto Mobile MobileCloud™ Platform 

Sabre is using Perfecto Mobile's MobileCloud platform to perform functional and regression testing on its GetThere Mobile application. This web-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform enables Sabre's testers and developers to remotely access dozens of real mobile devices connected to live mobile networks spread in different geo-locations. 

The MobileCloud Testing service allows Sabre to access real devices as needed for manual testing. This service is also being used to support collaboration and communications across global teams by sharing live or pre-recorded sessions on specific devices. It is useful for replicating reported bugs on real devices for improved troubleshooting.  

Using the MobileCloud Automation service, Sabre is well on its way to reaching its ambitious goal of 90% regression test automation. Sabre is using Perfecto Mobile's ScriptOnce™ keyword-based scripting technology to automate complicated test cases and instantly port them across multiple devices.  

In accordance with its testing needs, Sabre tests with both shared and private-dedicated handsets in the MobileCloud. Shared handsets in the public cloud are a cost-effective solution for support, manual user experience testing (i.e., "look and feel" testing) and porting. A private cloud of secure and dedicated resources is also being used for most of the regression testing and all the automation. 

Why Perfecto Mobile? 

Innovative and flexible mobile test automation that integrates with existing application lifecycle management and creates long-term value

In light of the project's strategic significance, Sabre had to be certain that its chosen solution for mobile testing was sufficiently robust, flexible and user-friendly to serve as the foundation for its mobile brands across all of its business units. MobileCloud Automation enables Sabre to accelerate time to market for mobile applications without having to compromise on service quality. Automated scripting tools enable instant creation of test cases which can be easily ported to multiple platforms and re-used by different testing teams.

The MobileCloud platform improves global reach and coverage, enabling Sabre's global support team to more accurately re-create an issue for a customer in a foreign network without having to procure and maintain phones in different networks. Immediate access to hundreds of the most relevant handsets and tablets in the MobileCloud enhances Sabre's customer care and increases its business agility. 

Seamless Integration with Sabre's Existing HP ALM Suite

Sabre Quality Assurance team is also planning to start using Perfecto Mobile's integration with HP Quality Center and QTP (QuickTest Professional), for software attestation. Perfecto Mobile offers a flexible architecture that uniquely fits Sabre's strategic vision to extend the capabilities of Quality Center and QuickTest Pro, rather than adopting new tools and skill sets.

"Our vision is to store all test cases in Quality Center and maintain one integrated environment for testing, storing test script, storing data points, reports and activating the test automatically " stated Manansala. 

The Results: Cost Savings, Streamlined ALM Process and Enhanced Application Quality 

By using Perfecto Mobile's MobileCloud, Sabre is able to optimize its mobile applications development lifecycle, boost application quality, and improve troubleshooting for mobile users worldwide. Since implementing this solution, Sabre has achieved the following business goals:

• Cost savings  
  • Allow Sabre to replace devices as needed without having to pay for new hardware
  • Reduce procurement costs in terms of phones and calling plans
• Streamlined ALM process 
  • Save time and eliminate tedious repetitive tasks by automating complicated test scenarios
  • Enable collaboration between globally distributed teams via interactive session sharing 
  • Write test cases that are re-usable across platforms and across business units
• Enhanced mobile application quality 
  • Enable more tests to be performed on more devices in less time
  • Reduce time required for manual testing
  • Provide faster regression testing, thus accelerating release cycles