Published on the 26/11/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Israel’s Perfecto Mobile is finalising arrangements with a local data centre to host an Australian instance of its mobile application testing service…
While Perfecto’s technology is used already by local companies including Coles and NAB in on-premise deployments, the local cloud based service should be operational by February and will allow enterprises to use what amounts to a laboratory-as-a-service, loading apps onto specific device types and then testing functionality in a range of different scenarios, connected to different local carriers.
The company which was founded in 2008 has 13 global data centres thus far which provide the Continuous Quality Lab service, which Perfecto describes as the mobile app equivalent of a “wind tunnel” allowing software developers to see how their app might operate when finally deployed with consumers. The company is also gradually rolling out the service for other devices including wearables and a broad swathe of Apple and Android platforms.
To support its international expansion plans the company this week announced that it had secured $49 million of funding from new investor Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), with continued participation from existing investors FTV Capital, Carmel Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners and Vertex Ventures.
Besides the Australian expansion the company is opening data centres in China, Japan and Toronto, Canada.
In Australia Gary Mitchell has been appointed director of the Asia Pacific region for the company. He said that the advent of the locally based cloud service meant that users would be able to “Stand up real devices with real carrier services, to do that you need local devices hooked into real local networks.”
Having a local instance would also overcome issues such as latency, said Mitchell. Also “To hook up and test a device on Telstra or Optus or Vodafone, you don’t want to use a device hooked up in New York or you will face big roaming charges.”
While Perfecto supplies the platform for testing Mitchell stressed that the actual test and writing of scripts to facilitate that testing would be handled by the app developer.
“They can simulate the load (on a device), or test what happens if you are in a lift during a transaction and move from a 4G signal to no signal to Wifi, or what happens if a phone call comes in during a transaction,” he said.
The company claims to currently host 1.2 million app tests in its app wind tunnel each month.
