BlazeMeter a performance / load testing as a self-service platform for mobile apps, websites, and APIs lets developers test mobile and API backend performance and view KPIs in a dashboard. BlazeMeter tools simplify testing, reducing the time to test while running many tests per day. Customers use BlazeMeter as a self-serve and on-demand service.
“All they need is a web browser to generate massive loads from various geographical locations and view the test results in real-time,” says Alon Girmonsky, Founder & CEO, BlazeMeter. BlazeMeter lets developers simulate any size and configuration of device (Android, iOS, etc) and network (AT&T, Verizon, etc) user groups from any country using their app or browsing their website in order to test the backend.
Developers can run simulations from minutes to hours in length, gaining real-time performance intel. Developers can test and fix the backend repeatedly until they are satisfied they have a version that is ready for release. Developers can then test continuously throughout the product lifecycle. Developers can script automated tests, test what-if scenarios, and examine user interactions with their backend technologies. BlazeMeter can scale simulations to satisfy very large customers who need to test for the kinds of loads that come with up to a million users.
Irdeto Perfects Multiscreen With BlazeMeter
Irdeto (http://www.irdeto.com/), a Naspers (http://www.naspers.com/) subsidiary and solutions provider for Pay-TV operators needed to performance test its Multiscreen mobile app, which enables TV viewing on a variety of devices and screens online. The Netherlands-based company had to examine broad simultaneous use of its app across many systems and complex, variegated usage patterns. Irdeto selected BlazeMeter to load test its Multiscreen technology backend while scaling user group size and changing test scenarios in real-time.
Irdeto must enable a seamless, low latency UX across all devices while enabling audiences to access media content on-demand on new mobile devices as they appear in the marketplace. To do this, Irdeto partnered with BlazeMeter for additional support to test the app against “real world” scenarios, simulated by JMeter scripts (Apache JMeter http://jmeter.apache.org/). The JMeter scripts had to be created and entered into the system, leaving a lapse in an otherwise automated process. Tested scenarios included surfing, buying, and running premium content and interacting with Google Wallet (https://www.google.com/wallet/). Irdeto tested ramp up using JMeter’s Ultimate Thread Group (http://jmeter-plugins.org/wiki/UltimateThreadGroup/).
Applying BlazeMeter and JMeter tools, Irdeto pinpointed and opened bottlenecks based on results from scaling tests to hundreds of thousands of users running a labyrinth of usage patterns. BlazeMeter enabled Irdeto to alter test schemes “on the fly” including adjusting weighting for one user activity over another. Irdeto was able to use BlazeMeter to drill down to less apparent bottlenecks and then resolve those as well.
Speaking The Language of DevOps
BlazeMeter is partnering with New Relic Insights (http://newrelic.com/insights) to add functionality to BlazeMeter’s testing and dashboard including the ability to query application data after testing using natural language questions, query data sets over time, audit test activity, and answer questions that relate to data coming from BlazeMeter and NewRelic combined. “New Relic Insights enables developers to create new dashboards that run in real-time. Insights can add five more dashboards to the 20 that BlazeMeter provides,” says Girmonsky.
“BlazeMeter and New Relic Insights speak the language of DevOps, the language of continuous development and improvement by automating the development process, removing bugs, and reducing the time to project completion,” says Girmonsky. Developers can use these tools to follow performance trending, to see whether and where performance is improving or degrading, and why.
The partnership helps operations, too. “The ops guy needs to see that all apps are up in production and not affecting each other or the overall user experience. These tools enable regression tests to do just that with every new software release,” says Girmonsky. The ops guy can use his New Relic Insights dashboard to build trends from continuous testing and improve response times as they discover issues using big data analytics.
According to Girmonsky, enterprises should expect ROI in time, cost, and person-hours savings using these tools. “We didn’t conduct these specific kinds of analyses, however, prior to the availability of these tools enterprises had to export data into Excel and do the calculations that way. Now, they can run automated calculations in minutes,” says Girmonsky. According to Girmonsky’s estimates, BlazeMeter offers the enterprise the equivalent of building its own infrastructure to do testing, which would require a commitment of about two professionals for a full year to build that out.
BlazeMeter alternatives include Flood.io (https://flood.io/), Load Impact (http://loadimpact.com), and HP LoadRunner (http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software-solutions/loadrunner-load-testing/). There are several other load testing platforms.
[*Irdeto data compiled from Irdeto / BlazeMeter customer reference. New Relic was not a participant in that case study.]