Before You Buy: 5 Tips for Choosing Dev Software
Continuous delivery of applications creates a need for a whole lot more testing of the code across the enterprise as the rate at which applications get built starts to exponentially increase. To cope with that increased volume of application testing, many IT organizations have started to rely on application tests that can be run via the cloud using tools that are made available using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. CA Technologies, in recognition of the growing popularity of that approach, has announced it is in the process of acquiring BlazeMeter.
Based on open source software that it pulls together to deliver its namesake service, BlazeMeter makes use of RESTful application programming interfaces (APIs) to make it simpler to integrate an external testing service within an application development process that might be running on premise or in the cloud. BlazeMeter also employs Docker containers to make it easier for IT organizations to actually run tests on their applications using the BlazeMeter service.
Jeff Scheaffer, senior vice president and general manager of the Continuous Delivery and DevOps business unit of CA Technologies, says BlazeMeter will become part of a unit of CA Technologies that has built out a number of tools intended to enable further adoption of agile development methodologies. In general, Scheaffer notes, as more organizations realize that they are to one degree or another a software company, the need to rethink the entire application development process increases.
“It’s all about competitiveness in the Application Economy,” says Scheaffer.
As that shift occurs, Scheaffer says, more focus is being brought to bear on application development pipelines across the enterprise than ever. The issue that many IT organizations have discovered is that processes that are dependent on testing applications after they are developed can’t keep pace with both the number of applications being developed and all the interdependencies between those applications. As a result, Scheaffer says continuous testing of applications conducted in parallel to the development process is now essential.
Most organizations today are still wrestling with how to modernize their DevOps processes. Application testing is obviously only one element of that process. But unless conducted in parallel with the development of the application itself, application testing is also the part of the process most likely to become a bottleneck that defeats the whole purpose of embracing DevOps in the first place.
