SOASTA, Inc., the leader in cloud and mobile testing, and CloudBees, Inc., the Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) innovation leader, today announced a new partnership and the release of SOASTA’s new Jenkins open source plugin that enables mobile app developers to build, test and instantly deploy applications in the cloud.

The new Jenkins plugin is SOASTA’s first open source plugin. It is the only fully-integrated solution to enable continuous integration for mobile development utilizing real mobile devices. Kohsuke Kawaguchi, CloudBees architect and creator of Jenkins, optimized the plugin for Jenkins. It has also been tested and verified on the CloudBees Platform. With the new plugin, mobile developers can shorten the test cycle and eliminate all manual tasks in the testing process. Developers obtain the SOASTA plugin directly from within Jenkins and can learn about it HERE.

“I appreciate SOASTA’s open-sourcing their Jenkins plugin and collaborating with the Jenkins community,” said Kawaguchi. “SOASTA brings the product expertise and the  Jenkins community brings their Jenkins expertise. When we collaborate, it’s a win for everyone. We look forward to seeing more companies follow the same path.” Users of the over 50,000 Jenkins implementations can immediately use the new Jenkins plugin with SOASTA’s TouchTest to test apps they build and deploy on the CloudBees Platform.

With SOASTA’s Jenkins plugin, mobile developers fully automate mobile functional testing, eliminating manual steps that can take from several minutes to many days to complete. The Jenkins plugin automatically makes apps testable, wakes up and reboots devices, installs the app on them and runs SOASTA’s TouchTest-automated test cases. This adds mobile app functional tests to the automated build process, eliminating manual tests for regression and user experience, resulting in faster builds and time-to-market.

“Mobile testing is usually on the critical path for organizations delivering mobile websites and mobile apps,” according to Gartner. “Mobile testing is significantly different from PC testing because of platform diversity, the ever-changing landscape of devices and the fact that some testing tools such as emulators don’t offer the same level of test fidelity as a real device.”

“SOASTA and CloudBees offered something I’ve hoped for, but wasn’t sure anyone could deliver,” said Will Pannel, Mobile Consultant, Media Agility. “After seeing a demo of the solution, I set up working prototype using SOASTA’s free product and the CloudBees Platform. My client is now ready to roll out a fully-automated iOS and Android delivery framework.”

In the mobile testing market, the ability to quickly deploy frequent updates is crucial. Together, CloudBees and SOASTA enable mobile developers to leverage Continuous Cloud Delivery, a complete development, testing and deployment solution, to speed up the development cycle. With Continuous Cloud Delivery, developers are able to deploy updates instantly, as soon as the code has been tested and approved.

“SOASTA has been an innovative mobile partner with us,” said Andrew Lee, vice president of business development, CloudBees. “Now developers can use one,  integrated environment to quickly develop, perform on-device testing and instantly deploy updates. We’re taking Continuous Cloud Delivery and matching the pace of modern, mobile application development.”

“SOASTA is focused on helping enterprises deliver the highest quality user experience
while keeping pace with rapid mobile app development,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. “CloudBees leads the charge in Continuous Cloud Delivery with the widely accepted Jenkins at the core. Through working with the Jenkins Community and the CloudBees team, we are pleased to offer another ‘first’ – continuous mobile app testing in the cloud.”

A full demonstration of the SOASTA and CloudBees solution will be covered in a joint webinar on April 10, 2013 at 10:00a.m. PDT.