BlazeMeter raises funds for cloud-based load testing
Load testing your Web site may just have gotten a bit easier thanks to BlazeMeter, a new startup
BlazeMeter, a new cloud-based service for load and performance testing of Web apps, today announced $1.2 million in venture funding.
BlazeMeter--based on the Apache JMeter open-source project is a load-testing application designed to measure the response of putting demand on a system or device.
Load testing typically simulates heavy usage (among other things) to stress the Web application to see how it responds. The aim, of course, is to release into productions Web applications that don't break or degrade--two things that drive away users quickly.
BlazeMeter's founder and CEO Alon Grimonsky told CNET that he built the BlazeMeter cloud in response to the requests from developers who weren't in the market for the existing expensive and complicated (to the point of needing professional service engagements to deploy and maintain) load testing solutions like HP LoadRunner and Gomez.
These developers were primarily using open-source JMeter for their load tests, and while it's a great solution, according to Grimonsky, it wasn't comprehensive or powerful enough to handle the kind of load tests that sophisticated Web applications require. In order to ensure that developers would be comfortable with a cloud-based offering that wouldn't alter their existing use cases, BlazeMeter claims that their offering is 100 percent compatible with JMeter.
And while there are other load-testing solutions out there delivered as a service, such as SOASTA, LoadStorm, and BrowserMob, Grimonsky claims they cannot handle complex testing simulations, unlimited testing capacity, interactive real-time reporting, and sophisticated result analysis and recommendations.
So if you're keeping score, BlazeMeter disrupts the market leaders by being less expensive, easier to deploy and use and other SaaS load testing services by being more comprehensive and powerful for larger, complex tests.
And while I can't claim that load testing is the most thrilling of technologies, as more and more commerce is conducted online, the need to test applications to ensure availability is more important than ever.