Tricentis has acquired Waldo as part of an effort to expand the scope of the automated testing capabilities it provides for mobile applications.

Waldo adds a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that provides IT teams with a no-code tool for generating mobile application tests. Waldo uses a virtual environment to simulate iOS and Android devices in a way that eliminates the need for physical devices to conduct tests. Instead, DevOps teams record their applications and then use the no-code tools to generate tests directly from within a browser.

Tricentis CTO Mav Turner said Tricentis opted to acquire Waldo because it makes it simpler for IT teams to generate tests that can be integrated across a DevOps workflow.

There currently is a lot of debate over how far application testing should be shifted left toward developers. In theory, the more developers test applications themselves the fewer issues there should be once an application is deployed in a production environment. However, there is still going to be a need for dedicated testing teams to conduct tests across multiple stages of the application development process to ensure quality, noted Turner.

The difference is more of those tests can include edge use cases that previously there would not have been enough time to conduct, he added.

Earlier this year, Tricentis added the ability to test native iOS and Android applications to its Testim software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform as part of an effort to extend the reach of that platform to applications that run natively on a mobile device.

Testing mobile applications is more critical than ever because the cost of failure—in terms of impact on the business—is now much higher as more organizations depend on software to drive business processes. The challenge is that many of these app developers don’t have a software engineering mindset, so they need testing platforms that automatically create and run tests on their behalf in a way that can be customized for specific use cases.

Over time, the quality of applications should steadily improve as many of the low-level mistakes that developers make are eliminated. That should improve everything from application security to the user experience as applications are continuously updated.

In addition, organizations that embed testing within DevOps workflows are steadily reducing the number of issues that need to be addressed before applications are deployed.

Hopefully, as more artificial intelligence (AI) is applied to the testing process, the number of reasons tests are not run as frequently as they should be will steadily decline. Today, it is still too difficult for many developers to author tests, so they don’t conduct as many as they should. Of course, many of them also simply run out of time when writing the code that drives the application takes longer than anticipated.

One way or another, developers will run out of excuses for not running tests as accountability for code quality increases.