Load Testing: Which Tool to Choose? Update

Load Testing: Which Tool to Choose?, an updated version of my original blog post, was published in the September 2013 issue of Testing Experience.

Talking about recent developments, in addition to supporting new technologies, it looks like the area named there ‘Integration Support’ is getting into focus now.

And, first of all, it looks like Continuous Integration (CI) gets full attention of load testing vendors. Not so long ago I told that load testing tools don’t provide [much] support for CI and agile development. And now the situation starts to change: just recently several companies announced Jenkins (probably the most popular continuous integration tool) plug-ins: BlazeMeter, Neotys, SOASTA. Clearly other vendors who want to stay relevant would follow. It is, of course, just the beginning – it will take some time until CI functionality becomes mature.

The same companies, for example, also announced integration with APM solutions such as AppDynamics and NewRelics, which may be related to both integration and monitoring enhancement. If we want to summarize the trend, we probably may say that performance testing becomes an integral part of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). Well, it always was in a way – but from the tool point of view it was rather a special, isolated niche with almost no integration with other parts beyond lip service. Started to change now.

So looking forward to attend and present at ALM Forum, which puts together all parts of ALM. I am excited to see that the organizers put testing as a separate track (and very good one – with serious attention to performance testing).