BlazeMeter Cloud Service Brings Load Testing To The Masses

BlazeMeter is officially unveiling its initial offering, a cloud-based load-testing service based on the open source Apache JMeter initiative. Load testing, the process of putting demand on a system or device and measuring its response, is either very complex and time consuming or, if you build your own version, very limited and often misleading, says company CEO and founder Alon Girmonsky.

In today's environment, Web applications are very important, and the only way to validate their performance is load testing, he says. "We want to revolutionize load testing, make it very professional, low cost and efficient." JMeter is an excellent automation tool and has already had more than a million downloads this year, but it is challenging to deploy and is often limited in terms of scalability for the requirements of enterprise and high-traffic websites, says Girmonsky.

As a self-service, do-it-yourself Web application targeted at developers and quality assurance professionals, the BlazeMeter offering provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use load and performance testing solution that can simulate and report on even the most complex testing requirements and environments. The company has already signed up 1,500 users looking for a self-service cloud offering like this, with 100 paying for use of the system, says Girmonsky. He adds that IDC predicts the automated software quality (ASQ) market will approach $2.6 billion in the next two years.

Girmonsky believes a consumption-based offering with a pay-as-you-go price of just $8 per server per hour, or a subscription package based on individual testing needs, will help increase usage 100-fold over the next 12 months. The company started developing BlazeMeter two and a half years ago, and started signing up beta customers in March. Customers can perform as many as 10 tests for free, and the solution can be up and running in just 5 minutes, he says.

There are quite a few vendors that offer SaaS load testing, says Audrey Rasmussen, partner and principal analyst, Ptak Noel and Associates. "Of course, there are the larger well-known vendors, such as Keynote, Gomez [Compuware] and HP. There are other vendors in the market, such as Apica, Neotys and LoadStorm. I know that Apica’s pricing is affordable" and seem to fit the other criteria, she says.

In September, Compuware started shipping a new load-testing offering that is expected to reshape the market. The company said Gomez 360° Web Load Testing was the industry's first load-testing solution that allows users to find and solve problems across the entire application delivery chain--from the first mile to the last mile. A little earlier, Apica entered the U.S. market with its cloud-based load testing and performance monitoring portfolio.

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