DEVOPSdigest

SOASTA announced the addition of Real User Monitoring (RUM)-based Testing to its Digital Performance Management (DPM) Platform.

Based on real user engagement data collected and analyzed by SOASTA’s mPulse product – including all users, all data, all the time – this new offering provides digital businesses with an unprecedented ability to test smarter, better and faster.

SOASTA’s new RUM-based Testing gives companies access to accurate performance test plans for their websites and applications using leading-edge data science techniques. Through deep analysis of RUM data – such as user paths, user bounce rates, user think time, user geography, web vs. mobile, device type, network type, first-party vs. third-party resource, and peak analysis, organizations are now able to generate automated test reports that tell them what to test, when to test, where to test and how to test. This reduces the risk of a crashing or slow website or slow application performance during high-traffic events.

"With competitive demand for digital innovation and benefits of rapid, high-quality, high-performance software deployments across diverse platforms, the need for contextualized test planning has never been higher," said Melinda Ballou, program director of IDC's Application Lifecycle Management & Executive Strategies service. "Real User Monitoring data – combined with strong analytics – can enable a more effective, differentiated level of decision-making and prioritization of test resources to help avert poor performance and software downtime."

Using the new testing capability, site owners always have a clear view of what’s working, what isn’t and what to do next by learning:

- Exactly when previous peak traffic windows were – down to the second

- Which geographic locations users came from

- Ramp times on a per-test-case basis and overall execution times, matching the previous year’s peak and applying growth for year-over-year increases in traffic

“SOASTA’s performance engineering team has a battle-tested methodology to ensure that the biggest retailers in the world have successful peak traffic seasons, and this comes from visibility into how their users behave,” said Matt Solnit, CTO of SOASTA. “Our RUM-based Testing functionality automatically generates all of the inputs needed to create a realistic and data-centric test plan based on our methodology, and it does so with never-seen-before accuracy. Things that were previously guesswork are now delivered with precision. It’s truly the holy grail of performance testing.”

SOASTA’s DPM Platform features a series of services to help digital businesses meet the growing demand for the ultimate measure of performance – the customer experience. Fueled by the DevOps philosophy and Agile methodology, DPM is a data-centric approach to performance management in which web and mobile applications are continuously measured, tested and optimized to deliver the best possible user experience and business outcome. The addition of RUM-based testing to the platform marks the seamless convergence of data, analysis, planning and reporting, giving businesses the contextual intelligence they need to maximize performance and revenue – in real time and at scale.

“There’s a new culture of performance in the workplace, and it requires close collaboration across functions,” said Tom Lounibos, Founder and CEO of SOASTA. “SOASTA’s data-centric DPM approach bridges the gap between testing and monitoring so that everyone can work together to manage and optimize their digital performance.”

RUM-based Testing is available immediately as part of SOASTA’s Digital Performance Management Platform.