TestPlant, the maker of the eggPlant range of software quality tools, today announced the launch of eggCloud, a private test cloud designed to help enterprises and test services businesses improve the way they manage software testing on mobile devices and desktop systems.
In conjunction with TestPlant’s leading test automation tool, eggPlant Functional, eggCloud provides local and remote access to a centralized pool of test devices. This includes iOS and Android products, Windows machines running any browser and any Linux servers. eggCloud is secure and compliant with all industry guidelines and is designed for dedicated in-house or multi-project distributed QA teams, as well as external developer communities. Manual testers can have equal access via eggCloud to the centralized lab and its devices.
The growth of on-line retail, mobile banking and the consumption of entertainment on smart phones, tablets and PCs places ever increasing responsibilities on businesses to guarantee their software runs robustly, securely and useably on a wide range of mobile devices and desktop systems.
“Software quality is now a business critical issue and is subject to the scrutiny of customers, shareholders and regulators, which means that companies and their IT service partners are rushing to establish their own software quality laboratories or ‘testing centres of excellence’ equipped with test engineers, mobile devices and software quality tools,” said TestPlant CEO, George Mackintosh. “Users of eggPlant Functional wanted us to provide a complete test lab solution and eggCloud does just that. Combined with our leading position in mobile test automation, eggCloud will outperform public cloud solutions by allowing enterprise test labs to take full control over testing at much lower cost. Now both manual and automation engineers can connect to the right devices at scheduled times, which improves test productivity and reduces the number of devices required.”
In addition, eggCloud allows software quality and test departments to:
• Schedule access to specific, or groups of, devices
• Manage user authorization and access rights
• Generate management reports on user and device access frequency
• Create quotas to control the access time of specific users
• Maintain a register of devices available
• Ensure devices are “clean” and loaded with current app versions
In common with the flexible pricing for all eggPlant tools, eggCloud is sold on a scalable term pricing model based on the number of concurrent client connections to an unlimited number of systems or devices.
“We already have keen interest in eggCloud from banks, telcos, developer communities and, of course, from IT service businesses,” said Mackintosh. “TestPlant constantly aims to be the brightest, most creative and energetic of software quality tools makers. The eggPlant range is ideally suited to the agile and mobile worlds – several steps ahead of HP, IBM and Micro Focus in features, flexibility and price.”
