February’s announcement of Dell’s move to go private got me thinking. The deal, put together by Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners, is potentially worth $24.5 billion or more depending what type of impact disgruntled investor and take-over czar Carl Icahn has on its negotiations.

In the meantime, BMC has announced and closed a deal with two private equity firms worth $46.25/share in cash or $6.9 billion.

Who will be the next tech company to close the curtain on public investors … Compuware, CA or even HP? And why the move to go private?

GigaOM tells us that cloud is the disruptive force at work:

As more companies evaluate the economics of putting workloads on massive webscale infrastructure — outside their walls — they will buy far fewer servers and routers themselves. And as more corporate applications are delivered via software-as-a-service models there are fewer huge upfront software licensing deals. Instead payments are spread out across a year or three. There is also pressure on the massive enterprise service and maintenance fees favored by companies like Oracle.

“There’s a seismic shift afoot with enterprise software vendors as they move from traditional pricing and distribution models to OpEx, SaaS and cloud models. This means a financial disruption for many of them, not just BMC Software,” said Dana Gardner, principal analyst with Inter-Arbor Solutions and GigaOM PRO analyst.

Seismic shifts in tech seem to be a continuous exercise. This particular shift, driven by an ever-growing mobile / social world, is of such an EPIC proportion that even industry veterans have never seen one like it before. Disruption is being experienced at every layer (User, Device, Network, Infrastructure) of the technology stack. This means that these are not good times for the incumbents (public vendors) whose technology and business models are showing their age. They will need to evolve or die, and evolution is best done in private. Innovation can be a messy business for even the most confident investors. It has many highs and lows, which makes it difficult to be watched by a glaring public eye. And so going private has become the new black in tech.

Nor is it just Dell and BMC. Other companies such as Compuware, HP, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft have angry shareholders who are unwilling to face the fact (or do not yet grasp) that the evolving product set and buying pattern means that profitability models are shifting, too.

Nor is it just tech. Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital are spending $23 billion to acquire HJ Heinz Co. in what is thought to be the largest acquisition in food industry history. Best Buy and Barnes and Noble have been mentioned in the press as considering going private.

What does this shift to private mean for all the newly minted private tech companies that dream of someday going public? Time will tell, but one thing I’m sure of in tech is that those who innovate faster typically win!

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 14, 2013 – SOASTA^®, Inc., a leader in mobile and cloud testing, today announced the launch of the global PERFORM partner program. PERFORM is designed to accelerate a partner’s growth in revenue and market share by combining access to SOASTA’s disruptive, industry-leading technologies, aggressive financial incentives and comprehensive, flexible training and enablement programs. The new PERFORM program will equip Value Added Resellers (VARs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs), complementary technology partners (ISVs), and Systems Integrators (SIs) to deliver the full SOASTA platform of products in key markets worldwide. Potential new partners should immediately submit their application to www.soasta.com/partners.

“With the escalating growth of the ‘app economy,’ we are seeing an explosion in the demand for automated testing solutions to provide an exceptional user experience while also safeguarding web and mobile revenue,” said Jay Hakami, President & CEO, SKY IT Group. “SOASTA has the right mix of tools to meet this rapidly growing market need correctly, and that’s why we are excited to make available and expand our solutions portfolio within cloud testing with SOASTA. We can dramatically grow market share, build both our revenue and reach with SOASTA.”

PERFORM is a direct reflection of SOASTA’s approach to delivering disruptive products in emerging high-growth market segments, and will provide partners the support and resources necessary to successfully offer the complete SOASTA platform, including CloudTest, TouchTest and mPulse. PERFORM is built on a globally consistent engagement model designed to accelerate participating partners’ time to revenue and increase the velocity in customer relationships, while still allowing for the flexible adaptation to each partner’s business model – no matter if they are vendor agnostic, a product reseller, a complimentary technology vendor or an MSP.

“Appcelerator believes all development will become mobile development, mobile drives the key requirements for the cloud, and mobile drives the need for a new platform” states Jeff Haynie, Appcelerator CEO, “This requires a different approach and products that are built from the
ground-up for a mobile first world. Appcelerator chose to partner with SOASTA since their product was created in a post-smartphone world to reduce release cycles, improve overall application quality and ensure the best possible end user experience.” “

“Working with SOASTA has been a seamless process,” said Rutesh Shah, CEO, InfoStretch. “SOASTA is a leader in performance testing, and we are glad to leverage them to fill strategic needs in our mobile solution portfolio to offer our clients the best-of-breed.”

A recent IDC MarketScape* noted that SOASTA’s “excellent partner program to augment the company’s offerings ranges from targeted testing providers to major cloud hosting providers and also to systems integrators (like IBM and CSC) and technology partners like Microsoft and CA Technologies.” An excerpt of the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Testing and Application Software Quality SaaS 2012-2013 Vendor Analysis, is available here www.soasta.com/idc2013.

“PERFORM is like our technology – disruptive and agile,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. “We recognize that our partners are important in expanding our global reach and look forward to enabling them to offer the best cloud and mobile testing solution in the market today. With PERFORM our partners can build their revenue and their reach with the de facto industry leader in cloud and mobile testing.”

About SOASTA
SOASTA is a leader in cloud and mobile testing. Its web and mobile test automation solutions, CloudTest and TouchTest, enable developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test with unprecedented speed, scale and precision. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and distills analytics to deliver actionable intelligence faster. With SOASTA, companies can have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, even in peak traffic. SOASTA’s customers include many of today’s most successful brands including American Girl, Chegg, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com.

SOASTA is a registered trademark of SOASTA, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

*IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Testing and Application Software Quality SaaS 2012-2013 Vendor Analysis – Enabling Business Agility and Quality in the Cloud, doc #237597,February 2013.

Press Contacts:
William McCormick, Grayling Connecting Point, (415) 442-4023, william.mccormick@graylingcp.com
Peter Galvin, SOASTA, Inc., (415) 269-7343, pgalvin@soasta.com

You may have never been a DJ  or “Spin Doctor”, but if you ever worked a graphic equalizer or used digital music mixing software, the power of the sliding controls to fade sounds, control volumes or change balance is familiar to you.

Imagine controlling web and mobile user traffic driving millions of users from multiple geographic locations or increasing the frequency or scale of realistic user scenarios with exactly the same controls!

The SOASTA CloudTest product team did!  It’s called Dynamic Ramp, and not only is it incredibly powerful, but it’s really fun to use!  More importantly, it represents the continued shift in real-scale performance testing where teams have moved load testing outside the test lab into production environments.

One of the most rewarding aspects of seeing the CloudTest platform in the hands of users over the years is to see innovative applications of the technology.  From early on, the cloud offered more capacity for load generation than most customers could handle in test labs.  This meant that more tests were run on production systems during maintenance windows or in slow hours.  With instantaneous feedback to system performance, customers began exploring with larger tests, and targeting new goals like peak capacity, effects of rapid spikes and sustained traffic at high levels.

During live tests, customers often asked if they could increase or decrease traffic or add more or less from a particular location as tests ran. It was always easy to pause or stop a test, modify the load levels and restart it, but we soon reached critical mass for enhancement requests for live ramp control, and the SOASTA team spec’d out the feature.

CloudTest’s Dynamic Ramp feature takes SOASTA’s already popular digital music mixing metaphor to the next level.  Users can now modify running tests on the fly.  Slider controls enable the scaling up or down on a master level, or scenarios can be altered individually with single fader controls. This makes anything possible in a single test session!  If all is well, let’s ramp it up!  How about add a spike of traffic from London?  What if we’re testing in production and response times creep up to risky levels?  Dial it down and keep on going.

Performance Engineering has never been more important, or cool, and CloudTest continues to benefit from the evolving use-cases of customers pushing the envelope in pursuit of end user satisfaction.  Take a look at the new video of this terrific feature and get ready to rock your own master track with CloudTest!

SEE IT NOW!

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 14, 2013 – SOASTA^®, Inc., a leader in mobile and cloud testing, today announced expanded capabilities of the CloudTest product on the SOASTA platform. Driven by customer load testing in production environments, CloudTest now includes new features to further improve testing time-to-results. SOASTA has also added new cloud capacity across Asia – increasing the Global Test Cloud to include over 750,000 globally distributed, cloud-based load servers.

New CloudTest Capabilities Further Compress Testing Time-To-Results

“Given the business impact, demand for speed and deployment complexity for software, organizations seek features such as test load creation on the fly as well as granular visibility into the impact of specific aspects of their web and mobile applications and flexible editing of test cases including during recording,” said Melinda Ballou, program director for IDC’s Application Lifecycle Management and Executive Strategies service. “We increasingly see the evolution of test solutions to provide these and other capabilities.”

Mixing Board Controls for dynamic ramp adjustment carries on SOASTA’s patented music-mixing paradigm with slider controls for increasing or decreasing distributed user traffic loads while tests are running. Changes and adjustments can be made during tests without stopping, starting or rescheduling.

Active Waterfall Charts provide live views of the most time-consuming elements of front-end web performance. Static waterfall charts are a well-known resource for single-user diagnostics and optimization. But now within CloudTest, live views of how individual web elements affect the overall user experience can be viewed and analyzed in the context of end-to-end performance tests while they execute.

Record to Clip capabilities accelerate test creation time by enabling advanced editing of test cases in line while tests are recorded. CloudTest users can now further streamline test creation by interactively editing test cases during the recording process. This allows experienced users to compress the steps of recording a test and editing the test into one continuous task — further decreasing pre-test activities.

“At Experian Marketing Services we’re committed to continuing to build a world class global QA organization, and SOASTA’s CloudTest platform has been instrumental in enabling us to successfully achieve key goals. CloudTest is empowering our global development teams to address issues earlier in the process, as well as test applications faster, more rigorously, and at scale for less cost.” said Larry Cohen, Global Head of QA at Experian Marketing Services. “As a result, our clients directly benefit as we are able to deliver a robust and resilient product.”

“So far, we have been using CloudTest for functional and performance testing on our web applications, and it has become a fundamental part of our QA process as it helps to detect defects or risks at earlier stages of the development,” said Carlos Monroy, Global Tech Lead, QA Automation at Experian Marketing Services. “For example, with our new global Cross-Channel Marketing Platform, we have been able to execute more complex tests in less time; with the additional benefit of transparency, as all the teams involved know in advance what and how everything is going to be tested.”

“We are very excited about using the latest SOASTA CloudTest release for our new global Cross-Channel Marketing Platform,” added Cohen, “This will enable us to dial traffic up or down in real-time, regardless of the scale of the test, accelerate test creation time, and get live insight into all the performance elements that could impact our users’ experiences around the globe, which is very important to us.”

Test Cloud Expansion Extends Cloud Testing Coverage in Asia

With new Cloud Service Providers like StratoGen and uCloud, plus additional cloud locations from Amazon AWS, Google, HP Cloud and IBM Smart Cloud, SOASTA’s Global Test Cloud now offers web and mobile traffic generated from China, Taiwan, Japan and Australia from cities including Beijing, Hong Kong, Jinghua, Tianjin, Tokyo, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, Sydney and Yunfu. Already the largest test cloud of available load generators, customers continue to benefit from SOASTA’s ever-expanding ability to scale to any level of traffic as global public and private cloud computing platforms expand.

“We’re pleased to welcome SOASTA, the leader in cloud testing, to our cloud platform.” Said Karl Robinson, Sales Director at StratoGen. “We’re excited to provide SOASTA with additional cloud capacity in Asia as well as the UK and US to best support the expanding global demand of customers who need accurate and realistic tests for their web and mobile apps.”

“The world’s best companies use SOASTA CloudTest to optimize user experiences and protect web and mobile revenue,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. “In fact, one of the nation’s biggest retailers saved an estimated $30,000 in revenue in the first hour of launch using SOASTA CloudTest. We’ve become an enterprise fixture with capabilities driven by customers pushing the edge of testing, who in turn, push us to continued levels of market leadership.”

All of the capabilities described here are shipping and available to SOASTA customers today. To learn more and see the entire set of new CloudTest capabilities, please join the live webinar “Load Testing Tips from the Cloud Testing Leader” at 10:00 a.m. PST on May 16, 2013. Register HERE.

About SOASTA
SOASTA is a leader in cloud and mobile testing. Its web and mobile test automation solutions, CloudTest and TouchTest, enable developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test with unprecedented speed, scale and precision. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and distills analytics to deliver actionable intelligence faster. With SOASTA, companies can have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, even in peak traffic. SOASTA’s customers include many of today’s most successful brands including American Girl, Chegg, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com.

SOASTA is a registered trademark of SOASTA, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

About Experian Marketing Services

Experian Marketing Services is a global provider of integrated consumer insight and targeting, data quality and cross-channel marketing. We help organizations from around the world intelligently interact with today’s dynamic, empowered and hyperconnected customers. By coordinating seamless interactions across all marketing channels, marketers are able to plan and execute superior brand experiences that deepen customer loyalty, strengthen brand advocacy and maximize profits. For more information, please visit http://www.experian.com/marketingservices.

Press Contacts:
William McCormick, Grayling Connecting Point, (415) 442-4023, william.mccormick@graylingcp.com
Peter Galvin, SOASTA, Inc., (415) 269-7343, pgalvin@soasta.com

“SOASTA pioneered the concept of cloud testing to make scalable, real world testing possible for Enterprise companies,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. “Companies are focused on optimizing the user experience for their customers. By delivering cloud based testing and evolving our technologies for mobile devices and the analysis of real users, SOASTA helps deliver billions of great user experiences.  We are pleased that IDC recognizes our leadership which is a product of our innovative technologies, great customers and partners and strong company execution.”

“Organizations must quickly evolve, test and deploy software on multi-modal platforms – from web to mobile to social to cloud — which drives pressing demand for cloud testing as a ‘killer app’ for application lifecycle management,” said Melinda Ballou, IDC Program Director for Application Lifecycle Management. “Adaptive provisioning of infrastructure is key for businesses, given the need for software releases in complex environments that may also have compute-intensive demands for social engagement and/or big data analytics.  SOASTA’s customer success delivering critical capabilities, varied deployment options, effective partnerships, flexible and affordable pricing (compared with high end alternatives) were factors that contribute to IDC’s placement of SOASTA as a leader in this MarketScape.”

According to the report, SOASTA’s position as a leader for enterprise ASQ is a result of “its strength in cloud-based testing and evolving mobile support,” as well as its ability to support new and emerging technologies, resulting in successful deployments.  SOASTA’s CloudTest Platform “offers a dynamically scalable testing solution to simulate Web-based traffic loads – scalable to over 1,000,000 concurrent user sessions” and can “support load generation from more than 500,000 cloud-based servers distributed across locations worldwide.”

The functionality that was most important to customers IDC spoke with was the ability to generate the amount of load cloud capability from outside their network with an overall view of what was happening. “Cost savings according to one retail organization using SOASTA was an estimated $30,000 in revenue on the first hour of launch. This represents revenue that would otherwise have been lost due to problems that would have brought the company’s site down, as well as potential for lost customers.” SOASTA’s references also praised the availability and flexibility of core resources within SOASTA for additional support, as needed.

IDC noted that SOASTA’s “excellent partner program to augment the company’s offerings ranges from targeted testing providers to major cloud hosting providers and also to systems integrators (like IBM and CSC) and technology partners like Microsoft and CA Technologies.”  The report also notes SOASTA’s Platform’s adaptability in providing for “flexible access to scalable infrastructure”” and support for the “different levels and needs of customer requirements,” including CloudTest, TouchTest, CloudTest On-Demand, mPulse, and the free CloudTest Lite version.

A free excerpt of the IDC MarketScape may be downloaded HERE.

About IDC MarketScape
The IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.  The complete “Worldwide Cloud Testing and ASQ SaaS 2012-2013 Vendor Analysis – Enabling Business Agility and Quality in the Cloud”, doc #237597, February 2013 is available from IDC HERE.

About SOASTA
SOASTA is a leader in cloud and mobile testing. Its web and mobile test automation solution, CloudTest and TouchTest enables developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test with unprecedented speed, scale and precision. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and distills analytics to deliver actionable intelligence faster. With SOASTA, companies can have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, even in peak traffic. SOASTA’s customers include many of today’s most successful brands including American Girl, Chegg, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com.

SOASTA is a registered trademark of SOASTA, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

Press Contacts:
William McCormick, Grayling Connecting Point, (415) 442-4023, william.mccormick@graylingcp.com
Peter Galvin, SOASTA, Inc., (415) 269-7343, pgalvin@soasta.com

. . . What Does that Mean for your Business?

This guest post is authored by Jeff Vance, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Startup.50, a site devoted to identifying hot new startups.  Jeff also regularly contributes feature stories to CIO, Forbes.com, Network World and many other publications.

Smartphones are taking over, rapidly pushing desktops off of their perch as the go-to computing device. According to information gathered from telcos and network operators and compiled by consulting firm Chetan Sharma, smartphone penetration in the U.S. passed the 50 percent barrier (versus feature phones) for the first time last year.

A study by Litmus found that 38 percent of emails are now opened on mobile devices, and ComScore’s new Mobile Metrix 2.0 report found that most users prefer to access social networks from smartphones, and when they access these networks on their phones, they prefer to do so via apps rather than a browser.

At the same time, cloud computing is quickly becoming mainstream. It’s catching on quickly with consumers (Dropbox, Google Docs, Spotify) and businesses alike (Box, Evernote, Salesforce.com, Marketo).

As these trends converge – and they are indeed converging, since the cloud helps mobilize apps, protecting constrained devices from heavy on-board processing and large amounts of device-side storage – many pundits are worrying about how this will affect businesses productivity.

Mobile apps usage is driven by a quality user experience

To ensure success for mobile apps, users need fast, affordable, comprehensive application testing. According to a study by Nuance Enterprise, while Android and iOS users now download about 10 apps each month, 95 percent of apps are abandoned within a month of download. The two main reasons apps were abandoned were slow response times (to launch, load or connect) and poor usability.

Developers are under extreme pressure to mobilize existing apps, create new mobile apps, and port various mobile apps to new platforms. In the process, many, many apps get into the hands of consumers well before they should.

Personally, I uninstall most mobile apps after trying them for the first time and finding that they freeze, crash my phone or just don’t perform well. If I uninstall apps more than once from a specific developer, there’s a good chance I won’t ever download their apps again.

This isn’t always the fault of developers. According to the initial findings from an ongoing Aberdeen survey, The Challenge of Application Performance in a Mobile Application World, providing mobile access to existing applications is the number-one app-related concern for nearly 70 percent of organizations. Yet, only thirty percent have implemented any kind of mobile application testing and performance assurance infrastructure.

In other words, the emphasis is on getting apps out the door. You can worry about performance later. The sad truth is that this is consistent with the history of software development, where products are shipped with scores of known bugs and developers then release endless updates and patches.

Lack of testing could alienate users – forever

Plenty of app developers do test but do it in a rushed way. Many developers believe that they only have the time to run limited lab tests. The pressure to get something, anything, out there is so great in the mobile world that what used to be alpha or beta releases are now published as if they were the final release. Many developers believe it is okay to put apps into app stores – especially if the app is free – in order to attract early adopters to serve as testers – often without the knowledge that they are serving as testers.

I downloaded a billiards app, for instance, to help me track my shots and determine which ones I missed most often. Then, I’d know what to work on in practice sessions. In its current iteration, the app stinks. I’ve given the developer feedback and I’m willing to give the company a chance to work out the kinks – but only for two reasons.

One, there’s really not another app like it in the Android Marketplace. Two, the stakes are low.

If there were a different option on the market, I would have asked for my money back and moved on. If this were a business-critical app, I would have uninstalled the app, given it a bad review and searched for an alternative.

Not everyone gives even low-stakes, free apps the benefit of the doubt because user expectations keep rising. High-quality free apps from Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Hootsuite, etc. mean that users expect more.

User experience is driving the success or failure of apps and usability is now a major competitive advantage.

Mobile testing must involve real-world scenarios

Fortunately, the industry is waking up to the need for more robust mobile testing. A couple of months ago, I evaluated more than 150 mobile startups for Network World’s “10 Hot Startups to Watch” series. The single biggest sub-segment was testing and monitoring, with close to 20 startups.

Most of these companies understood the importance of testing, and most were leveraging the cloud to make testing cheaper, faster and available on-demand. But the overall philosophy of testing still hearkens back to the early days of software development, when apps were tested in a limited lab setting and then shoved out the door.

That just won’t cut it in the mobile age. The only way to effectively test an app is to test it under real-world pressures. With mobile apps, this is a huge challenge since ensuring mobile app performance means you’ll need to account for different platforms and devices. If you don’t test in a real-world production environment, then you are turning your early adopters into de facto guinea pigs.

It’s fairly easy, though, to make your early adopters partners, rather than guinea pigs. A limited, invitation-only beta release will attract tech-savvy users who will want to push apps to their limits. This is much better than a sterile lab test.

However, early testing is just the start. App testing is an ongoing process, not a one-off project.

When an app doesn’t work, users don’t have the patience to wait for you to improve it anymore. They’ll just go elsewhere because this is no longer the age when a handful of software companies have near monopolies. Today, users have choices.

Conversely, if you deliver a tested, high-performing app to the market, users appreciate each and every improvement. If you streamline the interface or add a new feature, you improve customer stickiness. You only get this goodwill, though, if your app works as advertised from the very start.

Ongoing monitoring and testing isn’t just about keeping the app stable and functioning, though. In the mobile age, user behaviors change constantly. Monitoring apps means you’re monitoring user behaviors.

You’ll know if users typically leave your app to go to a mapping app, which would mean you should offer one-click integration with that app. Or, perhaps, users constantly share data in your app on social networks, which could show you the opportunity for a new sharing feature or even an entirely new app.

There are so many apps and users have so many choices now that app testing is mission-critical and must encompass the entire lifecycle of the app. In other words, the app lifecycle should be modified to be more of a continuous loop:

-Development phase that includes deeper levels of test automation
-Testing phase that includes a range of devices and realistic user scenarios  (alpha and beta releases)
-Deployment
-Ongoing monitoring and testing of production systems
-Collection and analysis of real user data
-Ongoing app improvements and enhancements based on user data
-New product development based on user data

Developing new apps is no longer about educated guesses about what users want. Now, you have real user data to guide your decisions.

Prelude

I came to develop a PhoneGap application on IOS and Android tablets. Agile/lean engineering practice led to test-first development, but when I began to build out continuous integration, I found the offerings for mobile automated functional testing and deployment lacked maturity.

I discovered SOASTA when I attended a webinar on mobile functional testing that culminated with a photo of a mobile lab, to which a continuous integration process was deploying and running an automated suite of functional tests to a variety of IOS and Android targets:

I required no further inspiration.  Such an outcome would provide my organization with a high degree of code coverage for our mobile offerings and protection against defect regression — to build the product right — and establish an infrastructure to deploy feature changes continuously — to build the right product.  The doors to lean mobile platform development are now wide open for us.

SOASTA and CloudBees

The webinar was hosted by SOASTA in partnership with CloudBees, a cloud-based provider of Platform-as-a-Service for developing web-based and mobile applications. We followed the practices recommended by SOASTA and CloudBees closely, and built out our Jenkins deployment pipeline comprised of the following jobs:

1. build the javascript assets for deployment to the IOS PhoneGap project;
2. build and deploy the IOS app capable of running SOASTA functional tests to devices tethered to the mobile lab;
3. kick off SOASTA functional tests;
4. build and deploy the production-ready IOS app to our enterprise Appaloosa store and notify QA that a new release is ready for a spot check.

(1) We run over 350 automated unit- and integration-tests and achieve greater than 80% code coverage:

(2) Using SOASTA command-line tooling and the Jenkins XCode plugin, we build a mobile-functional-test-ready IOS target and deploy it to the devices tethered to the mobile lab:

(3) Again, we use SOASTA command-line tooling to run a pre-recorded mobile functional test on a SOASTA-hosted instance of their TouchTest environment.

(4) Finally, provided each job succeeds, we build and deploy a production-ready release to our Appaloosa private enterprise store:

(5) There is a step that I purged, which uploaded to a QA site for approval.  This meant that the build would not pass until QA exercised their exploratory test phase. I did not feel right about the way in which this step would prevent continuous deployment.  But I felt that it was right to purge this step after discussing the topic with Joshua Kerievsky.  He asked me a simple question:  can the automated test do exactly what QA would do?  Because of the accurate recording I experienced with SOASTA TouchTest, my answer was:  yes.

Quick Starts and Support

There exists a ton of practice on both SOASTA and CloudBees for getting a mobile lab up and running.  SOASTA’s quick starts and knowledge base are comprehensive, and I found the forums and personalized sales support via email extra-ordinarily responsive.

The same is true of CloudBees.  Their partner demo site and blog provided concrete configuration and practice for many of the scenarios we required.  And Mark Prichard of CloudBees himself generously devoted a considerable amount of his time to walk thru the fine points of my Jenkins configuration.Summary

The other offerings I discovered that support mobile functional testing had obvious shortcomings in one-way-or-another.  SOASTA is the only one, to my knowledge, that can support development at enterprise scale. My favorite feature is to be able to deploy from the command line to IOS hardware targets in a continuous deployment scenario without manual intervention.

At the time of posting this, I learned that SOASTA has shipped my most-anticipated forthcoming feature:  the one that wakes up the sleeping device tethered to the mobile lab when the automated build deploys.

Our experience with SOASTA tooling for automated mobile functional testing was quite satisfying.

CLOUD CONNECT, Calif. April 2, 2013 – SOASTA^®, Inc., the leader in cloud and mobile testing, and CloudBees, Inc., the Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) innovation leader, today announced a new partnership and the release of SOASTA’s new Jenkins open source plugin that enables mobile app developers to build, test and instantly deploy applications in the cloud.

The new Jenkins plugin is SOASTA’s first open source plugin. It is the only fully-integrated solution to enable continuous integration for mobile development utilizing real mobile devices. Kohsuke Kawaguchi, CloudBees architect and creator of Jenkins, optimized the plugin for Jenkins. It has also been tested and verified on the CloudBees Platform. With the new plugin, mobile developers can shorten the test cycle and eliminate all manual tasks in the testing process. Developers obtain the SOASTA plugin directly from within Jenkins and can learn about it HERE.

“I appreciate SOASTA’s open-sourcing their Jenkins plugin and collaborating with the Jenkins community,” said Kawaguchi. “SOASTA brings the product expertise and the Jenkins community brings their Jenkins expertise. When we collaborate, it’s a win for everyone. We look forward to seeing more companies follow the same path.” Users of the over 50,000 Jenkins implementations can immediately use the new Jenkins plugin with SOASTA’s TouchTest to test apps they build and deploy on the CloudBees Platform.

With SOASTA’s Jenkins plugin, mobile developers fully automate mobile functional testing, eliminating manual steps that can take from several minutes to many days to complete. The Jenkins plugin automatically makes apps testable, wakes up and reboots devices, installs the app on them and runs SOASTA’s TouchTest-automated test cases. This adds mobile app functional tests to the automated build process, eliminating manual tests for regression and user experience, resulting in faster builds and time-to-market.

“Mobile testing is usually on the critical path for organizations delivering mobile websites and mobile apps,” according to Gartner¹. “Mobile testing is significantly different from PC testing because of platform diversity, the ever-changing landscape of devices and the fact that some testing tools such as emulators don’t offer the same level of test fidelity as a real device.”

“SOASTA and CloudBees offered something I’ve hoped for, but wasn’t sure anyone could deliver,” said Will Pannel, Mobile Consultant, Media Agility. “After seeing a demo of the solution, I set up working prototype using SOASTA’s free product and the CloudBees Platform. My client is now ready to roll out a fully-automated iOS and Android delivery framework.”

In the mobile testing market, the ability to quickly deploy frequent updates is crucial. Together, CloudBees and SOASTA enable mobile developers to leverage Continuous Cloud Delivery, a complete development, testing and deployment solution, to speed up the development cycle. With Continuous Cloud Delivery, developers are able to deploy updates instantly, as soon as the code has been tested and approved.

“SOASTA has been an innovative mobile partner with us,” said Andrew Lee, vice president of business development, CloudBees. “Now developers can use one, integrated environment to quickly develop, perform on-device testing and instantly deploy updates. We’re taking Continuous Cloud Delivery and matching the pace of modern, mobile application development.”

“SOASTA is focused on helping enterprises deliver the highest quality user experience while keeping pace with rapid mobile app development,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. “CloudBees leads the charge in Continuous Cloud Delivery with the widely accepted Jenkins at the core. Through working with the Jenkins Community and the CloudBees team, we are pleased to offer another ‘first’ – continuous mobile app testing in the cloud.”

A full demonstration of the SOASTA and CloudBees solution will be covered in a joint webinar on April 10, 2013 at 10:00a.m. PDT – Register HERE.

About SOASTA
SOASTA is a leader in cloud and mobile testing. Its web and mobile test automation solution, CloudTest, enables developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test with unprecedented speed, scale and precision. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and distills analytics to deliver actionable intelligence faster. With SOASTA, companies can have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, even in peak traffic. SOASTA’s customers include many of today’s most successful brands including American Girl, Chegg, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com.

SOASTA is a registered trademark of SOASTA, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

About CloudBees
CloudBees (www.cloudbees.com) provides a Java Platform as a Service that enables Continuous Cloud Delivery (CCD), accelerating the development and deployment of web and mobile applications. With CCD, development teams can quickly deploy applications and make frequent incremental updates to them. By eliminating the friction caused by provisioning, maintaining and administering complex hardware and software infrastructure, CloudBees allows developers to do what they do best: develop cool applications. The CloudBees Platform provides a set of services, instantly activated with a click, that allow developers to rapidly build and run new business applications with zero IT administrative overhead. CloudBees serves the needs of a wide range of businesses from small startups that need to quickly create new on-line businesses, to large IT organizations that need to rapidly respond to dynamic market opportunities. Follow CloudBees on Twitter (@CloudBees) and on Facebook. You can also try CloudBees for free.

Backed by Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners, CloudBees was founded in 2010 by former JBoss CTO Sacha Labourey and an elite team of middleware and open source technology professionals.

Press Contacts:
William McCormick, Grayling Connecting Point, (415) 442-4023, william.mccormick@graylingcp.com
Peter Galvin, SOASTA, Inc., (415) 269-7343, pgalvin@soasta.com

______________________________

[1] Source: Gartner Report: “Seven Best Practices for Optimizing Mobile Testing Efforts”, by Nick Jones, Feb. 27, 2013

SOASTA currently provides cloud and mobile testing for 14 of the top 25 retailers.  In January 2013, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued SOASTA the first-ever patent for Cross-Cloud Grid Provisioning.  Since inception in 2008, SOASTA has been recognized for innovation by several industry and analyst awards.  Clients include NASA, Microsoft, Intuit NASA and the London 2012 Olympics.

Lounibos will share his market insights and the company’s business strategy at the following times and locations:

10^th Annual Montgomery Technology Conference

March 6 at 9:00 a.m. PDT

The Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows, Santa Monica, CA

The Montgomery Technology Conference is attended by an elite, invitation-only audience comprised of senior-level private equity and venture capital investors and corporate industry executives.   Presenters and attendees will discuss major trends in the technology industry and how these massive trends will create attractive investment and M&A opportunities

The 25^th Annual ROTH Conference

March 20 at 8:00 a.m. PST

The Ritz Carlton, Dana Point, CA

The ROTH Conference is one of the largest of its kind in the U.S.  This invitation-only, four day event includes presentations from hundreds of growth companies, Q&A sessions, expert panels and thousands of management one-on-one/small group meetings.

New to the program in 2013, ROTH will introduce eight extensive one-hour discussions with companies that ROTH analysts believe have significant business developments of interest to investors.  SOASTA was selected as one of the groundbreaking companies.  Immediately following his 8:00 a.m. presentation, Lounibos will lead a breakout session held in the Colonade Room of The Ritz Carlton.

About SOASTA

SOASTA is the leader in cloud and mobile testing. Its web and mobile test automation solutions, CloudTest and TouchTest enables developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test with unprecedented speed, scale and precision. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and distills analytics to deliver actionable intelligence faster. With SOASTA, companies can have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, even in peak traffic. SOASTA’s customers include many of today’s most successful brands including American Girl, Chegg, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com.

SOASTA is a registered trademark of SOASTA, Inc.  All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

Press Contacts:
Curtis Sparrer, Grayling Connecting Point, (415) 442-4085 curtis.sparrer@grayling.com
Peter Galvin, SOASTA, Inc. (415) 269-7343 pgalvin@soasta.com

As an engineer, this can be a blessing and a curse.  It means you’ll get lots of bug reports very quickly if you’ve got a problem.  In Java land, on the server, this usually is great.  We can capture detailed stack traces and attach the application server’s log files to the bug.  This drastically reduces the time to research and reproduce bugs.

In JavaScript land, on the client’s web browser, results vary.  Currently the best method for getting client-side errors is to use window.onerror.  It’s not perfect.  It doesn’t catch every error, and many times catches harmless errors you’re not interested in.  Additionally, the information that’s captured isn’t always as rich as server-side (Java) errors, and many times doesn’t contain a stack trace at all, rather just a single line of text.  This generally leads to bug reports that cannot be reproduced, thus making a fix very difficult or impossible.

Recently, we’ve noticed an increase in a certain “class” of errors from JavaScript.  The code base for CloudTest was started in 2006.  At that time, jQuery didn’t exist yet, the initial release came a few months after.  However, Prototype JS did, and was judged to be the best option for our needs.  We folded it in and have never looked back.  If we were to make that decision again, we’d probably go with jQuery just because of the widespread adoption and community support.  Still, to this day, Prototype JS is a great framework, and I’m always happy to use it.  I’ve never found anything in the base jQuery library that Prototype doesn’t handle in an albeit different manner, but equally adept.

Now – getting back to that comment about widespread adoption.  It would seem that many browser extension developers believe that jQuery really should be the one-and-only JS framework to exist on today’s modern web.  So much so, that they inject jQuery into the current DOM, without using the noConflict() method!  For many sites, this isn’t a problem.  However, if your web browser is on a website that already defines any function in the global namespace that jQuery also defines, jQuery will overwrite it.  This isn’t a specific problem with jQuery, rather a problem with how browser extensions are written in some cases.  For our particular problem, if a website (such as CloudTest) uses a JavaScript library (such as Prototype JS), which defines a function in the global namespace (such as the $ function), and a browser extension injects some JavaScript (such as jQuery) which defines the same function into the global namespace, your code will be overwritten.

Obviously this is a very powerful tool, and is the crux of extensions like Greasemonkey.  However, when wielded incorrectly, it can cause disastrous effects.  Imagine a website that has code written specifically for Prototype JS, with lots of calls to the $ function.  In Prototype JS this is a shortcut for document.getElementById().  In jQuery, the $ function returns the global jQuery object.  If, for instance, you want to set an attribute on a DIV with id “hello”, you might write:
$(“hello”).setAttribute(“message”, “goodbye”);

When this code executes after Prototype has been overwritten with jQuery, instead you’ll receive an error similar to:
Object [object Object] has no method ‘setAttribute’

This proved to be one of those non-reproducible head-scratchers for quite some time, until we could view this on a customer’s browser first-hand.  5 minutes of debugging showed a BitTorrent browser extension was spamming the entire global DOM with jQuery, after the DOM had loaded.

So – what to do?  We aren’t going to go back and rewrite hundreds of thousands of lines of code to retrofit for jQuery, just so a customer can use a BitTorrent extension with CloudTest.

Instead, it’s a simple matter to detect this and give a friendly message suggesting the user disable browser extensions.  In our error capture process (from window.onerror), there’s now a simple test:

if (typeof jQuery != ”undefined” && jQuery == $)
{
// show a friendly message and return.
}

Hopefully this will lend to less time scratching heads and more time writing cool new features.

 Mobile Device Labs provide local access for continuous mobile app testing on the most popular devices including iPhone5, iPad Mini and Galaxy Tablets

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS, Barcelona, February 26, 2013 – SOASTA^®, Inc., the leader in cloud and mobile testing, today announced the availability of rapidly-deployed mobile quality solutions that eliminate the major risks reported by IT organizations across industries: TouchTest and CloudTest software, automated local mobile device labs, mPulse for monitoring real mobile users and SOASTA mobile experts.  With SOASTA’s combination of 100% test automation, constant access to real mobile device labs, cloud-based mobile performance testing, and global visibility of application users, customers are cutting delivery time, reducing risks of failure, and gaining global visibility of real mobile users.

“SOASTA is protecting the billions, even trillions, of mobile user experiences that businesses depend on today,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. “When feature phones were prevalent, manually testing an array of different hosted phones and optical-based solutions were adequate.  Now it’s all about the apps, and mobile development and operations teams want local access to devices, immediate results with test automation that doesn’t break and real-time visibility into their real mobile user’s experiences.  That’s what we’ve built for them.”

TouchTest software focuses on speed in every aspect of test automation. From test creation, test execution and validation, to access to real local or remote devices, SOASTA’s pioneering in-app, object-level approach is the only method proven to deliver on the value of precise, stable mobile test automation – eliminating time and manual effort for positive end user results, fast.   Other solutions emphasize access to devices on their schedule and their terms and rely on fragile optical recognition approaches. TouchTest enables 100% hands-free and always-on availability.

The TouchTest Mobile Device Lab delivers an on-site turn-key solution for integrated mobile test automation.  The on-premise mobile testing lab uses SOASTA’s Continuous Integration Testing Framework to ensure agile testing, from inside the mobile applications, on any number of devices.  The TouchTest Mobile Device lab includes some of the most popular mobile phones and tablets on the market today from iPad Minis to the latest Galaxy tablets – among many others. Test results and performance metrics are instantly available through an interactive dashboard to identify regressions, validate an array of pre-built elements or images, and understand the mobile app’s impact on battery, CPU and RAM.

CloudTest software has established SOASTA as the leader in cloud testing.  It is used by SOASTA customers everyday to assure mobile and web apps won’t fail under user loads. Nearly all enterprise mobile apps depend on backend services or legacy database and require scalability testing to assure mobile end users are delivered positive experiences. CloudTest delivers at any scale, anytime using cloud computing platforms across the globe.

mPulse measures and monitors the real user experience of mobile applications.  For the first time, mobile app owners can measure performance of native, hybrid, and mobile web apps based on real time performance data and its effect on mobile user experiences. mPulse collects and aggregates performance and engagement metrics that effect user interaction across multiple dimensions including, device type, OS, browser version and geography — directly from the users’ mobile app or browser — instantly presenting the most relevant information for optimizing the user experience.

SOASTA expert personnel provide everything needed for quality results, fast.  Mobile testing skills are rare today, and SOASTA’s mobile experts jump-start customer success.  From online or on-site Quick-Start trainings to fully managed mobile lab implementations brought ready-to-run to customer sites, SOASTA people deliver.

“Over 850 clients depend on us to deliver rock-solid performance to their customers, ensuring the best quality every step of the way.” said Steven Winter, mFoundry’s Director of Quality. “The speed and precision of our automated mobile testing lab built with SOASTA and their expert guidance reduces the time and resources needed to bring our product to market and increases our test coverage to handle our rigorous mobile quality demands with ease.”

“Mobile testing is already challenging, and will be more so as devices become more diverse and sophisticated, platform variants emerge and applications grow more complex due to the introduction of concepts such as context,” said Nick Jones, Vice President, Gartner[1].  “As applications become more demanding and complex, plan to perform more testing on real devices and networks, rather than through emulators.”

About SOASTA

SOASTA is the leader in cloud and mobile testing. Its web and mobile test automation solutions, CloudTest and TouchTest enables developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test with unprecedented speed, scale and precision. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and distills analytics to deliver actionable intelligence faster. With SOASTA, companies can have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, even in peak traffic. SOASTA’s customers include many of today’s most successful brands including American Girl, Chegg, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com.

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS, Barcelona, February 26, 2013 – SOASTA^®, Inc., the leader in cloud and mobile testing, today announced the results of its survey of 500 IT executives representing such industries as Global IT Services, Global Tech, eCommerce, Global Outsourcer, Insurance, Financial Services, Transportation and Retail.  Nearly all the respondents, 94%, indicated multiple gaps in their mobile testing approach that lead directly to significant business risk.  They ranked the top five challenges in the mobile testing industry today:

1. Development that falls behind without direct access and continuous testing on current devices using an expanding array of touch gestures
2. Time-to-market delays incurred by extensive and error-prone manual testing
3. Unknown app impact of actual device performance (CPU, network, battery)
4. Ignoring the threat of exponential mobile traffic spikes
5. Inexperienced testers who miss critical areas of mobile scale and functionality

When asked ‘where are the gaps in your mobile testing “factory” today?’ the participants responded:

• Automated functional testing                          57%
• Real device performance                                52%
• Mobile Testing Skills                                       41%
• Testing for mobile traffic spikes                      41%
• Access to the latest devices                           37%
• Easily installing mobile apps to test                28%

All of these challenges are addressed by SOASTA’s complete solution for mobile app quality:

1. Mobile device labs can be shipped ready-to-run, deployed in minutes and accessed locally and remotely by development and test teams
2. TouchTest software replaces manual testing with test automation that is precise and stable via the proven in-app, object-based capture and replay approach
3. Continuous Integration frameworks like Jenkins are utilized to push mobile apps to devices and run lights-out for 100% automated testing
4. Mobile performance is secured using CloudTest with unlimited scale delivered with the cloud and validated on real devices while tests run
5. SOASTA Services teams provide the deepest mobile testing expertise for turnkey testing services to strategy, implementation and education

“Mobile app users have no tolerance for apps that don’t work as expected. SOASTA’s powerful automated mobile testing solution allows mobile developers using Appcelerator to focus on building transformative apps, safe in the knowledge that they will meet user expectations when they are released,” said Jonathan Rende, Appcelerator VP Products. “SOASTA and Appcelerator share the same goal of accelerating the continuous delivery of apps while improving quality.”

“Mobile is the driving force behind many of the major innovations of today, yet the fact that mobile functionality and performance remains unaddressed by more than 94% of the IT teams across verticals is no surprise,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO.  “SOASTA has recognized these gaps in the market at an early stage and we have developed our solution to meet the demands of testers. We continue to focus our innovative approach on compressing time-to-results to assure the best mobile user experiences, which drives our customers’ businesses.”

About SOASTA

SOASTA is the leader in cloud and mobile testing. Its web and mobile test automation solution, CloudTest, enables developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test with unprecedented speed, scale and precision. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and distills analytics to deliver actionable intelligence faster. With SOASTA, companies can have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, even in peak traffic. SOASTA’s customers include many of today’s most successful brands including American Girl, Chegg, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com.

SOASTA is a registered trademark of SOASTA, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

Press Contacts:

William McCormick, Grayling Connecting Point, (415) 442-4023  william.mccormick@graylingcp.com
Peter Galvin, SOASTA, Inc.,  (415) 269-7343 pgalvin@soasta.com