Simerly has over 20 years of experience in financial services at ACI Worldwide in development, technical sales support and global sales. Most recently, Simerly was the Solutions Architect for ACI On Demand. Simerly is in charge of developing and deploying Paragon's SaaS testing solution.

Financial institutions, merchant acquirers and processors are faced with a multitude of challenges when testing their ePayment processing software. Quality Assurance and Development staff are frequently geographically dispersed, which can create project delays due to incongruent desktop-based testing tools. Critical project time is often lost because testing tools are not kept up to date with the latest software patches. SaaS removes the time and headaches associated with maintaining IT infrastructure and eliminates the need to apply maintenance releases and card association mandates on-site.

"Testing is a critical element of our customers' day-to-day operations. It is imperative that their test systems be available and up to date prior to the start of a project or testing cycle," says Mark Simerly, Director of Managed Services. "By using Paragon's solutions in a hosted environment, customers will eliminate the need to maintain their test system and can instead focus on the actual testing itself. This will improve their time to market, thus adding to the bottom line."

"SaaS is a proven model that has been embraced by organizations throughout the world. This model allows customers to focus on improving efficiency and collaboration with their Development and Quality Assurance departments while maintaining a very predictable cost structure," says Jim Perry, VP of Sales and Marketing for Paragon Application Systems. "Paragon has made significant investments to extend our market-leading testing solutions by adding an On-Demand testing service available over the Internet. Mark's experience in the financial industry makes him a perfect fit to lead the development of Paragon's SaaS testing solution."