Already widely used in blue chip organisations such as BP, KPN Telecom, Cendant Corporation, ScottishPower, Virgin Mobile, Atos Origin and 3 (Hutchison 3G Telecom), GH Tester enables integration projects to be delivered in a fraction of the time and cost than has previously been the case, and with considerable enhancements to delivered quality.

Francesca Kay, Test Manager at Virgin Mobile who use the tool for testing their integration projects, says of GH Tester: "We are able to complete testing in 25% to 40% of the original estimated time and my test team has found the range of functions available within the product a revelation."

With the new version, not only has this range of functions been greatly enhanced, but the range of technologies has been expanded to include Sonic MQ, IBM WebSphere MQ and other JMS implementations. Web Services (SOAP) are also supported in the new release.

"With the current emphasis in the integration space for Service Oriented Architectures and an Enterprise Service Bus approach to integration, there is a real need for automation to enable these to be delivered quickly and with high quality" comments John Chewter, Product Development Manager at Green Hat Consulting. "The new version of GH Tester addresses that need in the area of automated testing, irrespective of the actual technology chosen by the organisation to implement that vision. With the years of experience and expertise that have gone into GH Tester, we are confident that it will become the de facto standard for automated testing of SOA/ESB integration projects."

As an additional benefit, GH Tester will also offer integration with a range of leading Test Management software suites, including Mercury Quality Center and Compuware TestManager.

GH Tester is thought to be the first specialist automated testing tool designed specifically for integration projects that truly offers multi-protocol support. As such, it will appeal to users of a variety of such messaging protocols and, in particular, to those organisations who use various different technologies within their organisation. GH Tester will finally enable them to standardise on a single testing tool that will, in all probability, also provide integration into their overall test management environment.

"The release of the new version of GH Tester opens up huge opportunities for those involved in the development and deployment of SOA, Web Services, JMS projects and the like," comments Mark Glading, Head of Sales & Marketing at
Green Hat Consulting. "From today, they can use GH Tester to cut the time of implementation and at the same time improve the quality of the final deliverables. Our market testing in the run up to this release indicates that there will be huge interest from organisations, large and small, from around the globe. We will be actively seeking to grow our international network of resellers in order to be able to respond to this interest at a local level."

GH Tester is licensed on a per-user basis with licences available in batches of five. A support and maintenance service, providing free upgrades to new versions and releases, is provided by Green Hat, via their network of resellers where appropriate.