casino.com - casino gaming

NEW YORK & LAS VEGAS -- Identify(R) Software, the leader in application problem resolution software, today announced that Station Casinos, Inc. (Las Vegas, NV), a leading provider of gaming and entertainment, has deployed Identify's AppSight(TM) Black Box software to assist in the on-time delivery of the gaming industry's latest sports wagering system -- one of only two such systems delivered in 20 years. Built on the Microsoft .NET framework, Station's new wagering information network, or "WIN", took three years of intense effort to develop. Using AppSight, Station was able to achieve its goal of preparing WIN for its mandatory Nevada Gaming Commission field trial, in time for the 2005-2006 NFL season.

"Our new .NET-based wagering system is by far the most complex in-house application we've ever developed," said Marshall Andrew, CIO and VP of Technology for Station Casinos. "As we went forward, we could see that we'd miss football season, our trial vehicle, unless we could compress our remaining development and QA process without sacrificing quality or compromising our process."

Station Casinos began using AppSight in its Quality Assurance (QA) group to accelerate the problem resolution process and reach key release milestones. As a result of the significant time savings AppSight enabled, Station Casinos was able to shorten the QA process from an expected six-to-eight months to just three, so that they could achieve the high quality necessary to meet the Commission's stringent standard for field test release, and hit their target release date.

"Starting our WIN field trial in time for the NFL season was critical to our business and adding more QA staff wasn't the best option," said Andrews. "AppSight saved us at least 50% in QA time and 15-20% in our overall time-to-market. We never would have gotten into trial on time without it".

A recent survey by Dynamic Markets found that 75 percent of application problem resolution cycle time is spent determining the root cause of application errors. In a traditional QA environment, testers use manual and automated methods to "break" and "stress" the code, and then spend time documenting bugs and problems so that the development team can attempt to reproduce them prior to resolving them. The manual process of documenting tester recollections and correlating with various other logs is time consuming (accounting for up to 30% of a tester's time) and leaves considerable room for error, often resulting in the inability to reproduce or solve the problem.

The AppSight Application Problem Resolution System optimizes the problem resolution process by automating the capture of all problem information -- eliminating the need to reproduce the problem and its environment -- and accelerates root cause analysis by removing the iterative trial and error steps inherent in manual approaches.

"AppSight creates a standardized, focused, problem resolution process that improved communication and cooperation between QA and the development team," says Andrews. Based on our success so far, we are expanding our use of AppSight to other departments and other wagering systems currently under development."

AppSight will be deployed to assist Station's Help Desk, IT Operations, and Application Development teams to quickly resolve any software issues that are reported to the support team. Station is currently using AppSight to ready a second new wagering system for Gaming Commission trial --this one, for pari-mutual horse racing and the NASCAR Series.

About Identify

Identify(R) is the leader in application problem resolution software, helping hundreds of enterprises and software vendors speed application delivery, increase application quality, performance, and availability, and reduce application support costs. The company's AppSight Application Problem Resolution System leverages unique, patented Black Box Application Flight Recorder technology to capture, communicate, and determine the root cause of application problems, thereby dramatically accelerating problem resolution processes across the application lifecycle. Founded in 1996, Identify is a global organization, with operational headquarters in New York and offices in Israel and throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific. For more information about Identify, please visit www.identify.com or call 800.364.5467.

About Station Casinos

Station Casinos, Inc. is the leading provider of gaming and entertainment to the residents of Las Vegas, Nevada. Station's properties are regional entertainment destinations and include various amenities, including numerous restaurants, entertainment venues, movie theaters, bowling and convention/banquet space, as well as traditional casino gaming offerings such as video poker, slot machines, table games, bingo and race and sports wagering. To learn more about the Company, visit www.stationcasinos.com.

Note: Identify is a registered trademark and AppSight is a trademark of Identify Software Ltd. All other company and product names contained herein are the marks of their respective holders.

casino.com - casino gaming

Menu