SmartBear Software, the leader in software quality tools for the connected world, released a new plugin for Ready! API that supports CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) for Internet of Things (IoT) testing. The plugin adds new test steps to support CoAP testing, which furthers SmartBear’s commitment to the IoT industry. SmartBear’s Ready! API is the first fully integrated, extensible and affordable platform to help development, testing and operations teams build reliable, scalable and secure APIs.

“SmartBear sees the Internet of Things as one of the most influential technology trends to come along, and the rise of IoT technologies means many businesses will be venturing in this direction if they haven’t already,” said Ole Lensmar, CTO at SmartBear. “With so much reliance on communication between devices, it’s essential to give development teams the tools they need to deliver high-quality systems. This new CoAP plugin is part of our continued investment in the IoT and the people who build it.”

The recent Gartner, Inc. press release1, “Gartner Says 4.9 Billion Connected ‘Things’ Will Be in Use in 2015,” states, “Gartner, Inc. forecasts that 4.9 billion connected things will be in use in 2015, up 30 percent from 2014, and will reach 25 billion by 2020. The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a powerful force for business transformation, and its disruptive impact will be felt across all industries and all areas of society.”

There are millions of devices in use today, many of which use different protocols for their communications. Hence, one of the biggest challenges with the IoT is the lack of standardization. Currently, leading protocols include messaging formats HTTP, MQTT and CoAP. With this latest plugin release, SmartBear now supports all three protocols with the most recent release of SoapUI 5.2 Open Source in July supporting MQTT testing.

SmartBear’s CoAP plugin delivers an easy-to-use implementation, installing new test steps in one click in the familiar Ready! API interface. You can also easily see all CoAP messages (in-bound and out-bound) in the Logs panel. For more information about the new plugin, visit: https://smartbear.com/plugins/coap-test-steps-plugin-page.

Ready! API is an end-to-end API readiness platform with tools for testing and virtualizing APIs. Ready! API has various application modules available including SoapUI NG Pro, the next generation of SmartBear’s SoapUI for testing all Web services, including REST and SOAP APIs as well as the ServiceV Pro module for creating, managing and sharing virtualized assets. Ready! API is available for download at: http://smartbear.com/product/ready-api/free-trial/. For updates, follow @ready_api on Twitter.

For more information on the Ready! API tools, visit: http://smartbear.com/product/ready-api/overview/.