Interview with Iosif Itkin, CEO and Co-founder of Exactpro
We had the pleasure to interview Iosif Itkin, representing one of our newest members Exactpro.
ZOIS: Please tell us about your position at Exactpro.
Iosif Itkin: I started the company with a group of colleagues in 2009. We incorporated our first entity on 9th of September – International Software Testing Day. From Exactpro’s inception, I’m holding the position of the company’s co-CEO. I was responsible for selling the company to London Stock Exchange Group in 2015 and later for the management buyout from LSEG in 2018. Exactpro is an independent business focusing on quality and resilience of mission critical financial market infrastructures. We work with exchanges and clearing houses in 20 countries on all six continents. Exactpro is now employing over 580 specialists. Headquartered in the UK with operations in the US and Eastern Europe. The clients are regulated by the FCA, Bank of England and their counterparts from other countries.
Currently I oversee Exactpro strategy and operations. I am also involved in overseeing projects for some of our strategic accounts. In particular, those related to the introduction of Distributed Ledger and Artificial Intelligence technologies across our client base. My other responsibility is industry-wide collaboration: I am co-chairing FIX Trading Community Monitoring, Onboarding and Software Testing Group (MOST), organizing a set of industry and research conferences, including EXTENT Software Testing and Trading Technology Trends and TMPA Software Testing Machine Learning and Complex Processes Analysis. I am very proud to represent Exactpro at Zero Outage Industry Standard Governance Board.
ZOIS: Which aspect of Zero Outage endeavour is most relevant for your company?
Iosif Itkin: ZOIS goal to strive for Zero Business Outages resonates well with what we do – Build Software to Test Software. We help our clients to build and operate resilient platforms. Business continuity is very important, especially in the current turbulent times. A conceptual framework for extensive enterprise-level testing created by ZOIS is in line with our company’s endeavor to deliver the highest quality level through extensive test automation.
ZOIS: How, in your opinion, will your company’s clients benefit from the membership?
Iosif Itkin: We anticipate that our engagement with ZOIS will provide our customers with an understanding that the true quality can only be achieved through a continuous effort based on a thorough end-to-end testing strategy and adhering to the ‘early testing’ concept. The knowledge that the QA service provider follows ZOIS’s set of guidelines creates a certain degree of confidence as the testing process is organized according to the widely accepted industry standard.
ZOIS: Which part of the Standard: People, Platforms, Processes or Security do you personally find most interesting and why?
Iosif Itkin: People are always the most interesting component, no matter what the business area is. When people share the same philosophy and demonstrate the right attitude, they have an infinite potential with building the platforms, managing the processes and ensuring security – because it matters. Thinking of Exactpro, the most interesting thing is that the company has attracted employees having very different professional, educational and cultural backgrounds – yet, this diversity doesn’t prevent them from sharing the same values. To create a team out of such people, it is extremely important to have a well-formulated conceptual framework at hand. Such a framework will enable them to use their competence to the best of their abilities while providing a source for fostering the right corporate culture.
ZOIS: What is the main reason for Exactpro to be joining ZOIS?
Iosif Itkin: It is very important to us to support the endeavour of promoting ZOIS values across the industry. We are happy to share Zero Outage principles with our own team, our clients and peers and educate the organizations which are yet to discover the Standard providing a set of best practices to achieve the highest quality for their software.
ZOIS: Thank you for your time.
