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Shunra Software, a provider of network-virtualization and application-performance engineering solutions, today announced integration with Hewlett-Packard load-testing and performance technologies in support of the companys mobile performance platform.
Shunra announced its ability to capture real-world mobile network conditions and virtualize those dynamic conditions in a load-test environment powered by HP LoadRunner and HP Performance Center.
Moreover, Shunra is actively taking its mobile platform to market, participating with HP at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, to demonstrate its integrated mobile performance capabilities in the HP Mobile booth. Shunra also will participate as an exhibitor at HPs premier client event, HP Discover, in Las Vegas in June.
By combining Shunras industry-leading mobile application performance-testing solutions with HPs load-testing products and HP application lifecycle management (ALM), organizations now have the ability to reduce risk, cost and time, by preventing failed application launches, Bill Varga, COO at Shunra, said in a statement. The mobile wave has the power to propel companies and organizations forward, or wreak havoc. With Shunras vision of a mobile performance platform and our demonstrated integration with HP in mobile application test environments, the risk of mobile failure is greatly diminished.
Shunras vision on mobile application performance testing includes best-practice guidelines in several areas of the testing process: functional and device testing, networks and variability testing, load and performance testing, and back-end infrastructure and capacity testing.
The vision includes Shunras open approach to technology, making integration with leading mobile test technologies easy, the company said. For example, Shunra for HP, a network-virtualization and performance-testing solution, is embedded in and shipped with both HP LoadRunner and HP Performance Center. Customers benefit by having real-world mobile network conditions incorporated into the load-test environment, including virtualization of variable bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss.
The integration improves the accuracy and reliability of load-test environments, making them more representative of the real world. In addition, customers have the ability to precisely virtualize the real world in the test environment, which means that load- and performance-test results are more predictive of how an application will actually behave once deployed.
Testing applications without consideration for the variability and constant changing nature of mobile network conditions is a mistake that organizations cannot afford to make, Varga said. The impact of the mobile network is not just felt by the mobile end user; back-end infrastructure and server resources are particularly susceptible to network conditions and the user sessions they support. With Shunra and our partners powering a mobile performance strategy, organizations can take the guesswork out of performance testing and deliver optimized apps without fear of post-deployment failure.
Gal Tunik, senior product manager of HP Applications, told eWEEK that what the partnership with Shunra brings that HP could not do on its own is: HP LoadRunner and HP Performance Center and our Shunra partnership delivers the necessary protocols for performance testing both Web and native mobile apps.
In performance testing, the objective is to ensure that the system being tested will be able to perform when placed under realistic load conditions, Tunik said.
In order to simulate mobile transactions, our mobile protocolsMobile TruClient and Mobile Applicationsenable LoadRunner or Performance Center to generate simulated mobile transactions, Tunik told eWEEK. However, because the load-test system is typically connected to the system being tested by a local network condition, the bandwidth and network performance are not typical of what a mobile transaction would typically experience. This is where Shunras network-emulation capabilities are key. Shunra for HP is an integrated network-emulation feature that extends LoadRunner and Performance Center, giving the testing team the ability to simulate a wide range of mobile network conditions, thereby ensuring that the performance test accurately reflects the mobile environment.
Gary Jackson, CEO of Shunra, told eWEEK, Both HP and Shunra have recognized that getting ahead of this mobile performance problem is important to our customers. We extended our products to deal with this.
In a guest column in SDTimes, Jackson described a piece of the problem: Rightly or wrongly, end users now expect faster performance levels from mobile applications than from the desktop or laptop. Evidence reveals that an end user that was satisfied with a seven-second page load last year expects the same page load in three seconds now. Users dont care about the added complexity of mobile networks, devices and geographies. Users dont care how it gets done; they just want apps that load quickly and perform perfectly.
On Feb. 2 Shunra announced its mobile-app performance platform that delivers the capabilities, services and partner-integration points organizations need to reliably test for mobile performance.
The challenges of ensuring a positive mobile end-user experience are now top of mind with nearly every CIO, CFO and CEO, Jackson said in a statement. The recognition that under-performing mobile applications are affecting corporate revenue, productivity, customer loyalty and brand, mandates a new approach to meeting performance objectives. Now is the time for those organizations to develop and implement companywide mobile application strategies and platforms.
Shunras strategy to enable mobile performance testing platforms includes packaging of its mobile-specific capabilities, including:
¢ Shunras global library of mobile and broadband network conditions that provides average, best-case and worst-case conditions from cities around the world;
¢ Shunra NetworkCatcher Express Mobile, which captures network conditions like latency and packet loss in real time from any iOS or Android device;
¢ Shunra vCat and PerformanceSuite, which leverages real-world network data to enable network virtualization within the test lab; and
¢ Shunra’s mobile performance analytics that automatically generates a performance scorecard, identifies poorly performing resources and delivers performance optimization recommendations that have been shown to improve mobile performance by over 40 percent.
Shunra is bringing to market a strategic platform that offers integration between Shunras capabilities and best-of-breed products and vendors that enable mobile load testing, functional testing and application-deployment capabilities, Jackson said in early February, hinting at the HP news to come. Over the next two months, we expect to announce a number of partnerships with solution providers and global integrators who share our passion and view on the necessity of network virtualization and the criticality of proactive application-performance engineering.
Also, for his part, Jackson addressed the value of network virtualization in his SDTimes piece:
“Network virtualization helps organizations understand their end users more completely, determining what devices they are using, where they are located and what networks are being accessed. This critical information is communicated throughout the software life cycle during design, development, QA, performance test and operations. Then, when applications fail to perform as they did in the test environment, the information available includes the fact that a performance issue occurred when a user tried to execute a specific function, and includes the conditions that user was operating under. A reliable and reproducible test case for troubleshooting exists with a holistic view of the users actions and environment.“
Meanwhile, as some app-performance solution providers are beginning to offer their technology as a service, the Shunra integration with HP will be an on-premise solution.
Shunra for HP is specifically an integrated extension to HP LoadRunner and HP Performance Center software, HPs Tunik said. It is not a standalone offering, but is built on Shunras extensive expertise in network emulation, he added. In addition to Shunra for HP, Shunra has a full line of products and services to help customers address challenges of volatile network conditions, ranging from cloud to mobile scenarios.
Because Shunra for HP is an integrated part of Performance Center and LoadRunner, when Performance Center is deployed on HP SaaS [software as a service], it is an option for SaaS customers to purchase Shunra for HP as an extension to Performance Center, Tunik said
Shunra is part of the HP Enterprise Management Alliance Program (EMAP), where Shunra has been certified as a Gold Business Partner.
Shunra demonstrated its HP integration in a Webinar with HP on Jan. 24 that is now available on Shunras Website. To find more about Shunras vision for mobile-application performance testing click here.