TestComplete 12.2 Connects to On Demand Cloud Testing Lab

SOMERVILLE, Mass. — January 18, 2017 — SmartBear Software, the leader in software quality tools for teams, announced TestComplete 12.2, which now connects to an on demand cloud testing lab. New Environment Manager, available with TestComplete 12.2, enables access to over 500 real testing environments comprising combinations of operating systems, browsers and screen resolutions. Environment Manager is powered by CrossBrowserTesting, a division of SmartBear acquired in 2016.The demand for delivering high-quality software at a faster pace continues to move organizations to adopt DevOps or Agile practices. However, the diversity and complexity of setting up a test environment often creates challenges to adopt these practices. Instead of focusing on activities that help build robust automated UI tests, development and QA teams spend considerable time and effort maintaining and upgrading real devices, on-premise labs or virtual machines. In cases where development and QA teams are able to rely on an operations team for support, the operations team struggles to keep the infrastructure up-to-date.

The need for parallel test execution as QA and development teams push to increase speed and test coverage just adds to the infrastructure setup and maintenance challenges faced by operations. This is primarily because parallel execution necessitates scaling infrastructure dynamically as per needs of the QA team. Even when operations teams are able to scale and keep test environments up-to-date, QA and development teams get limited actionable data in the form of log files for test debugging purposes from physical and virtual machines.

Within TestComplete 12.2, development and QA teams can use the new Environment Manager feature to access services provided by CrossBrowserTesting, one of the fastest growing cloud testing platforms with more than 300,000 users worldwide. With more than 10 million tests run so far, CrossBrowserTesting provides a highly secured, scalable and flexible cloud containing more than 1,500 mobile and desktop browsers in more than 65 operating systems, including iOS, Android and Windows.

The new Environment Manager feature enables development and QA teams to connect to CrossBrowserTesting and easily execute and report on automated UI tests. These tests run across more than 500 browser combinations, removing test infrastructure maintenance headaches for operations, development and QA teams. Multiple tests can be run in parallel, which speeds releases and increases coverage. Once tests are completed, detailed metrics summarizing pass/fail results across operating systems, browser versions and resolution configurations are available. Additionally, videos, logs and screen shots can be used to quickly identify issues. If needed, users can gain access to a live desktop browser to further debug issues like HTML, JavaScript and CSS incompatibilities.

“When I first heard about the new Environment Manager I was very excited as it sounded like it would aid me in multi-environment testing and SmartBear did not disappoint,” said Kevin Curteman, QA Analyst at ESG. “It has easily reduced my test maintenance time by 30 percent, and as a result, overall productivity of our automated testing has increased by at least 25 percent. This tool is great and has already become a regular part of our project planning.”

“With the purchase of CrossBrowserTesting last year, SmartBear seems to have strengthened its web and mobile testing capabilities,” said Carl Lehmann, Principal Analyst at 451 Research. “While testing complexity in the cloud, mobile and IoT era can still be challenging, efforts to standardize and automate testing techniques with tools like the new TestComplete Environment Manager should be welcome by all QA teams.”

TestComplete Environment Manager is generally available in TestComplete 12.2. Running tests in CrossBrowserTesting’ s on demand cloud lab starts at $1,250 per year for one parallel test and up to two users.

For more information, visit: https://smartbear.com/product/testcomplete/web-module/environment-manager