Hardware Testing for the Leading Storage Provider
INDUSTRY
Manufacturing
CLIENT
Seagate
Over the years Waverley’s been a dedicated testing partner for Seagate
"Over the years Waverley’s been a dedicated testing partner for Seagate, providing a team of QA engineers in Vietnam."
Seagate Technology faced time pressure to launch a new line of network-attached storage (NAS) products but lacked sufficient QA resources internally. Waverley rapidly built and deployed a dedicated testing team in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, providing comprehensive functional, compatibility, and regression testing. The four-month engagement was so successful that Waverley became Seagate's trusted QA partner for over 15 years, supporting multiple product lines and scaling to 12+ specialists across both locations.
Seagate
Seagate Technology, founded in 1979, is the world's leading manufacturer of hard disk drives and data storage solutions. Based in Cupertino, California, Seagate has grown to become the first disk manufacturer to ship 2 billion hard drives (by 2013). The company is also a leading innovator in drive technology, pioneering high-capacity drives like the first 3TB desktop drive (2010) and 4TB external drive (2011). In late 2012, facing accelerated product development schedules, Seagate partnered with Waverley to scale its QA capacity for a critical network-attached storage product line.
Project Analysis
Seagate was under significant time pressure to launch a new business-focused network-attached storage (NAS) product line, critical for their market position. Internal QA resources were fully allocated to other priorities. The challenge required three things: quickly assemble an experienced QA team with deep networking and storage product expertise, get that team up to speed on the existing test plan and product feature set, and establish seamless collaboration procedures between Seagate's California QA leadership and a distributed testing team in Vietnam.
What We Delivered
Waverley built a dedicated QA team in its Ho Chi Minh City office, successfully ramping up to full productivity within a month of Seagate's request. The team consisted of three QA engineers and one QA lead with relevant domain expertise in networking protocols and mass storage testing.
Testing scope delivered:
Collaborative documentation creation: test plans, test cases, and compatibility matrices with Seagate's QA team
Functional testing across all product features
RAID and multi-volume testing for storage reliability
Compatibility testing across multiple operating systems and browsers
Usability and localization testing
Regression testing on every code release
Domain-expertise-driven ad hoc testing for edge cases and integration scenarios
Technology Stack
The NAS products operated across a complex infrastructure including RAID arrays, Unified Storage Manager (USM), iSCSI protocols, Active Directory authentication, WebDAV, AFP, and NFS file sharing protocols. Waverley's team developed deep expertise in testing across this entire stack.
Development Process
Collaboration occurred through weekly status meetings discussing testing procedures and findings. Bugs were reported in real-time through Seagate's Bugzilla tracking system. The majority of significant bugs discovered and fixed originated from ad hoc testing—demonstrating Waverley's domain expertise in uncovering edge cases and integration issues that scripted testing alone would have missed.
Outcomes & Impact
The results exceeded Seagate's expectations in both immediate outcomes and long-term partnership value:
- Launch on schedule: Product successfully launched without delay despite initial timeline pressure
- Quality assurance: Comprehensive testing coverage across functional, compatibility, and edge-case scenarios
- Seamless integration: Vietnam team functioned as a seamless extension of Seagate's internal QA organization
- Long-term partnership: Initial four-month engagement evolved into 15+ year relationship (2005 onward)
- Scaled capacity: Team grew to 12+ QA specialists supporting multiple product lines
- Business growth alignment: Supported Seagate's expansion—the company more than doubled in size and introduced more products than at any time in its 35-year history while maintaining quality standards
Conclusion
Seagate's case demonstrates Waverley's capability to rapidly assemble specialized QA teams, integrate them into client organizations, and deliver predictable quality at scale. The 15-year partnership illustrates the value of domain expertise, distributed team management, and a commitment to becoming a true extension of a client's engineering organization. Waverley's approach—combining thorough scripted testing with domain-expert ad hoc testing—proved essential for a storage product manufacturer operating in a complex, regulated market.
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