In the second half of 2007, Ruckus Wireless was faced with a significant problem. Our business was rapidly growing, and our products were being deployed to service a more diverse set of market applications than we had originally anticipated. While in general this was of course a good problem to have, the net effect was that our limited internal SQA resources were straining to keep up which was slowing our release schedules. Additionally, with all internal SQA resources focused on immediate release testing, our test automation efforts were lagging behind creating further drag on the organization. It was clear something needed to be done.

We decided to investigate outsourcing options as we needed to add 10-15 people very quickly and in a cost effective manner. We issued a RFP and solicited and reviewed responses from four different vendors. Interestingly enough - and not entirely by design - the four vendors who we received responses from were located in the US, India, Russia, and Vietnam respectively. While all four vendors had credible responses, we ultimately chose Sunrise Software Solutions (S3) based in Vietnam.

I was immediately impressed by the completeness and thoroughness of the RFP response from S3. Their response was clearly documented, and it was obvious that S3 had taken the time to review our RFP carefully and had provided a detailed and thoughtful response. Subsequent discussions with regards to pricing and contract negotiations were similarly handled promptly and professionally, further raising our confidence in selecting S3 as our SQA outsourcing partner. And of course cost is always a significant factor, and it was surprising to me how cost effective S3 was particularly when compared to India based outsourcing vendors.

It has now been almost 18 months since we first engaged with S3 and started to build our team. We were able to build the team up to approximately 10 engineers within a few months, and we have subsequently grown to 15 engineers. While S3 did not have significant prior experience with testing wireless networking gear, their personnel have been very eager to learn and have come up to speed quickly on our products and our technology. Their engineers are intelligent and hard working, and when working in our Sunnyvale, California office they have blended well with our internal engineering team. I have also been pleasantly surprised by the relative lack of turnover in the S3 team, which is a major benefit given the relatively long learning cycle when coming up to speed on our product set. When problems do come up, Thanh Nguyen and his staff have been very responsive to our needs and have worked quickly to resolve any issues.