Hello, I'm Steve Miller, Vice President for the SoftwarePlanner (ALMComplete, QAComplete, DevComplete) line of application lifecycle management products here at SmartBear.

This morning was the much-anticipated Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. An estimated 2 billion people from around the world were expected to tune in, and the Internet braced for an onslaught of traffic hoping to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom.

Customer Guest Blog

QA led the charge to virtualization over the last decade, often teaching other departments about the advantages and pitfalls. With QA now facing the toughest problems it’s had in 30 years, it’s time to wring even more benefits from virtualization. The same goes for your career: Build on what you already know about virtualization to be a leader in the cloud.

Agile software development practices are all the rage, but many teams are not as agile as they claim to be. Many companies adopt a “hybrid” approach. Here’s how those work.

Taxpayers set a new record this year, submitting more electronic tax returns than ever before. More than 101 million people e-filed their returns for the 2011 tax season, up nearly 9 percent over last year. The 100 million threshold was breached over the weekend as last-minute filers hurried to submit their returns before the April 18 deadline.

Seventy percent of projects that fail are due to poor requirements, no matter what kind of IT project it is. Applying a reasonable requirements discipline often faces more resistance than with business automation projects. Why do we doubt ourselves?

Today we launched Release 9.6 of our ALMComplete, QAComplete and DevComplete products, all available at http://www.smartbear.com. This release has both cool new features, and provides some features and enhancements that improve the deployment and upgrade experience for On-premise customers. First, let's discuss the really cool features.

Does the computer industry seem just a little too strange? Never fear: Monty Python encapsulated several nuggets of wisdom years ago that summarize exactly what is behind the sometimes-tawdry behavior.

Thanks to improvements in the job market, consumer confidence -- and spending -- is on the rise. After experiencing gains for the past nine months, consumer spending is up more than 7 percent since last March. Also impressive, and more relevant to our conversation here, online spending is up 16.1 percent compared to the same time last year.

If you've ever shopped at a high-end luxury retailer, you've likely experienced something not typically found in your run-of-the-mill shops. The carpets are plush, the sales staff attentive, and you might even have been offered a glass of wine while you browse. Now what if you visit that same luxury retailer online? Does the royal treatment you receive in person carry over into the online world?

They did it again!

You probably say "Turing Test" without thinking overmuch about the source of the expression - or its inventor.

Migrating from a waterfall programming model to Agile development means far more than learning new programming techniques. A move to Agile means adopting a new way of seeing software development and project deliveries.

Do you need ammunition to convince the Powers That Be that it’s high time for your Web dev team to adopt HTML5? Here’s a half dozen ways that QA and development teams can benefit. If these suggestions don’t make them shut their yap, nothing will.

Congratulations to the UConn Huskies men's basketball team for their win against Butler and their third national NCAA title in 13 years! It was an exciting tournament with a lot of surprises and upsets along the way.

You’ve seen those job listings: the ones that say, “Must be able to work additional hours, beyond 8 per day, as necessary, to complete tasks required or meet deadlines.” If it’s an ostensibly Agile job such as Scrum Master, though — is this a bad sign? Does Agile’s notion of “sustainable pace” mean it's inappropriate to work more than 40 hours a week?

We had an extraordinary event here at AlertSite at the end of last week. AlertSite has joined the SmartBear Software family. I personally consider this to be a huge positive for AlertSite and what we will be able to accomplish for customers moving forward together.

We would like to share some more exciting news with you.