Composite applications need new testing strategies, and top-performing QA organizations are turning to automation and an end-to-end view of quality in order to keep pace, according to a new benchmark report from Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks company (NYSE: HHS). The report "SOA and Web Service QA and Testing: How Different Can It Be?" is based on a survey of more than 250 companies worldwide for a birds-eye view of this complex subject.

"SOA and web services are raising questions about how to ensure the quality of applications that are much different than those that the QA team has worked with in the past," said Perry Donham, Aberdeen's Director of Enterprise Applications Research, and the report's author. "The companies that are seeing significant improvement in the quality of their composite applications are those that are taking an end-to-end process view of QA, are involving the business users in the quality process, and are leveraging automation to increase test coverage."