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Author: Deborah Schalm

  • Catchpoint Releases Industry’s Most Comprehensive Employee Experience Monitoring Solution

    Expanded digital experience management capabilities include first-ever end-user self-help to optimize employee experiences and dramatically improve productivity and satisfaction.

    (New York, USA) – October 29, 2020 – Catchpoint™, the leader in Digital Experience Management, today announced the release of its new Employee Experience Monitoring solution, allowing companies to proactively identify and fix device, application and network problems encountered by a global and distributed workforce. Additionally, these new capabilities will help first-level IT staff to quickly troubleshoot individual and enterprise-wide problems without unnecessary ticket escalations and employee frustration.

    “The sudden shift to remote work has put huge pressure on IT teams that are now responsible for delivering reliable and consistent experience to employees distributed in home “offices,” with variable and often unstable internet connections. This has amplified the need for more proactive approach to monitoring. By the time an employee has to make a call to complain that they “lost connection to email” or that they “could not connect to video conference with an important client,” is too late. Productivity is gone and employee morale is diminished,” said Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of Catchpoint. “First and foremost, our new Employee Experience Monitoring helps companies proactively identify and resolve issues quickly and before employees are impacted, hence increasing their productivity in this new era of work.”

    Unlike other monitoring solutions, Catchpoint Employee Experience Monitoring combines real-time endpoint analytics, global user sentiment data and full-stack active (synthetic) monitoring approaches. IT teams now have access to the broadest data set and deeper insights designed to address the challenges and demands of today’s remote workers’ digital experience. Additionally, Catchpoint is the first to offer the end-user self-help to remediate challenges improving the employees’ overall experience with the networks, devices and applications they rely on.

    “When you’re managing a company’s IT environment, it’s not good when users are telling you systems are down. We want to get in front of issues before they become problems. Catchpoint helps us stay ahead of poor end-user experiences.” Pete Charlton, IT AVP for TMNA Services

    Traditional monitoring solutions attempt to measure end-user experience by collecting data from either the network or the device. Catchpoint monitors end-user experience by starting at the endpoint and then providing in-depth visibility into the application, network and device. Catchpoint Employee Experience Monitoring capabilities:

    • Enable end-users to self-remediate with a new desktop application that shows device and network health with recommendations to how to resolve issues
    • Empower IT teams to resolve remote employee issues like VPN performance
    • Proactively monitor digital employee experience from your end-user devices with expanded synthetic measurements
    • Deliver a single platform for proactively solving problems highlighting immediate issues that need attention

    The new Employee Experience Monitoring solution is part of Catchpoint’s Digital Experience Monitoring SaaS platform and it is available immediately. It is backed up by Catchpoint’s award winning (Stevie Award winner in 2018, 2019 and 2020) 24/7 support that is included in the solution for no additional cost.

    Additionally, Catchpoint Endpoint Monitoring was just named a Strong Performer by Forrester Research in The Forrester New Wave™: End-User Experience Management, Q4 2020. Demonstrating, in our opinion, the continued focus on delivering end-to-end visibility to ensure employees and end-user have the best possible experiences.

    For more information about Employee Experience Monitoring attend the live virtual event Remote CTRL: Adapting IT to your Distributed Workforce on Thursday, November 12, 2020 at 11AM EST and visit Catchpoint on the web.

  • Axway creates return-to-work app. Releases source code to the public

    Griffin App created entirely on the Axway AMPLIFY platform.

     

    PHOENIX – OCT 27, 2020 – Axway (Euronext: AXW.PA), a leading provider of API Management and integration software, announces the release of the source code for Axway’s mobile office scheduling assistant, the Griffin App. Their goal is to help other companies return to the office safely using APIs and mobile technology.

    To return to the office in each of the 17 countries Axway employees work, its teams had to follow varying requirements for opening, depending on the region. These include government regulations, building regulations, and localized screening questions unique for each location. Thanks to the Griffin App, employees can now see the current and scheduled capacity for any specific office on a given date, then prepare their workday accordingly.

    “With over two thousand employees in nearly 30 offices, we were looking for the best solution to empower employees in their choice to utilize our office spaces throughout the world,” said Dominique Fougerat, EVP People & Culture at Axway. “The Griffin App helps Axway manage capacity in each office and ensure safety requirements are observed during the pandemic. We are now releasing that code to any company that wants to do the same for their employees.”

    The cross-platform native mobile app for iOS and Android — and the entire backend — was built using the AMPLIFY platform. This includes many platform services like AMPLIFY™ Titanium, API Builder, Mobile Backend Services(MBS), AMPLIFY Runtime Services, and AMPLIFY API Management. With the release of the source code, companies can use the power of AMPLIFY to quickly and easily integrate with any third-party application required by the organization. The open source of the code and its API centricity means developers can adapt to local environments, a capability that aligns with Axway’s Open Everything initiative.

    “Our Griffin Innovation Lab, in partnership with the CTIO office, came together to create a full backend infrastructure to record office utilization,” continued Fougerat. “Using the Axway AMPLIFY Platform, it took only one of our developers just two weeks to create an experience that empowers employees – and my local HR representatives – to manage the nuances of over two dozen offices.”

    You can find the Griffin App source code on Github here.

    Learn more about building the app here.

    About Axway

    Axway revitalizes heritage IT infrastructures, helping more than 11,000 customers accelerate their digital journeys, add new business capabilities, and drive growth. With the AMPLIFY™ platform –­­ which combines APIs, MFT, B2B integration, and content services –  we guide innovation and enhance the customer experience faster and more securely than ever. axway.com

  • Applitools announces integrations with GitHub Actions and Microsoft Visual Studio App Center

    The Visual AI-powered testing platform integrates with GitHub and Microsoft for UI version control and fast build-test workflows with the goal of ensuring a software delivery life cycle that improves quality while rapidly bringing ideas to production

    SAN MATEO, Calif., — October 27, 2020 — Applitools (applitools.com), provider of a test automation platform powered by Visual AI and Ultrafast Grid, announces integrations with GitHub, GitHub Actions, and the Microsoft Visual Studio App Center. The integrations allow developers to seamlessly add Visual AI-powered testing to every build and pull request (PR), resulting in greater UI version control and improved developer workflows.

    In addition to the testing process improvements, the integrations enable developers to easily and quickly correlate code changes with UI/UX updates for Visual UI version control across web and mobile apps, using any testing framework and programming language.

    Image
    (pictured above: Applitools Visual AI detects a visual diff between the master & branch)

    When feature branches are created, Applitools instantly mirrors the feature branch to allow a new set of baseline images. This process simplifies the automated testing of all feature branches without impacting the trunk and its tests. As PRs are merged back in, the integration automatically updates the target branch with the source branch’s baseline images while ensuring that no conflicts exist between branches, eliminating test maintenance overhead.

    Image
    (pictured above: Applitools / GitHub integration)

    With GitHub Actions, developers get automation directly within their workflow. Now developers can automate visual testing for their code by integrating Applitools through a GitHub Actions workflow. From there, they can quickly address and resolve regressions by using Applitools root cause analysis capabilities. This helps teams customize their workflows to meet developers’ needs while employing Visual AI to help automate and accelerate build, test, and release pipelines.

    Applitools Eyes along with the new GitHub integrations is available for free for open source projects hosted on GitHub using the Applitools Open Source plan.

    Priyanka Halder, Senior Manager for Quality Engineering at GoodRx, said: “The integration of Applitools with GitHub merges two essential products that enable our team to continuously deliver. This collaboration unlocked new efficiencies without any changes to our workflow. Having used this for a while now, I cannot imagine our team being without UI version control and auto-baseline updating on merge.”

    With Visual Studio App Center, developers get streamlined workflows for mobile apps including automated UI testing. By combining this capability with Applitools, developers can now automate functional and visual testing seamlessly and find bugs on any device type before release, while ensuring that the app is functioning properly and is visually compliant across all devices and screen sizes. Developers receive test results, full-resolution screenshots of each step, and performance metrics.

    “Expanding our integrations with GitHub and Microsoft helps developers deliver innovative solutions faster,” said Moshe Milman, co-founder and COO of Applitools. “These integrations make it effortless for developers to add Visual AI and cross-browser testing capabilities to their pipeline, allowing them to bring their products to market faster and with higher quality.”

    In addition to the GitHub and Microsoft integrations, Applitools has also joined the GitHub Partner Program as a Technology Partner.

    “We’re excited to welcome Applitools to the GitHub Partner Program and for them to expand their role within the GitHub ecosystem,” said Jeremy Adams, Director of Business Development and Alliances at GitHub. “Applitools’ Visual AI powered testing platform and GitHub’s automated, streamlined developer workflow pair perfectly to support our shared vision of making it easier to ship higher quality software, faster.”

    About Applitools

    Applitools enables engineering teams to release web and mobile apps quickly at low cost. Applitools Visual AI modernizes test automation use cases—including functional testing, visual testing, web and mobile UI/UX testing, cross-browser testing, responsive web design testing, cross-device testing, PDF testing, accessibility testing and compliance testing—to help organizations deliver innovation at the speed of CI/CD at a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

    Hundreds of companies from verticals including technology, banking, insurance, retail, pharmaceuticals, and publishing—including 50 of the Fortune 100—use Applitools to deliver digital experiences to millions of customers on any device and browser, across all screen sizes and operating systems. Applitools is headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., with an R&D center in Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information, please visit applitools.com.

     

  • Copado Wins Best New DevOps Platform Based on Record 1H FY2021

    Category leadership comes on the heels of strong first half performance — global revenues more than doubled year-over-year and EMEA grew by more than 240%

     

    Chicago – Oct. 22, 2020 – Copado, a leading native DevOps platform for Salesforce, today announced it has been named a category leader in DevOps by several organizations. The company was named Best DevOps Startup in the Computing DevOps Excellence Awards. In September, the Copado DevOps platform won the Gold Stevie® Award in the DevOps solution category in the 17th Annual International Business Awards®. Based on the strength of customer reviews, Copado has been named a leader in Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery by G2 for four straight quarters.

     

    These wins cap off a tremendous first half of fiscal 2021. The company reported more than 116% year-over-year revenue growth, with the European market growing 242% compared to last year. These numbers demonstrate that the DevOps revolution has officially arrived in the Salesforce ecosystem, ushering in the next generation of Salesforce delivery value management.

     

    Due to high demand for Salesforce DevOps during the global pandemic, Copado dramatically expanded its customer base and is on track to exceed more than 1,000 customers by the end of the year. In 1H FY2021, the company added new customers across industries to its roster, including Kimberly Clark, Starbucks and VMWare. The company also expanded its presence in the public sector with COVID-19 specific projects with the California Department of Health, the State of Kansas, the Louisiana Department of Health and the State of Vermont. Additionally Copado is on track to achieve FedRAMP authorization in Q4.

     

    Customer net retention grew to more than 110% as existing customers standardized on Copado across their delivery teams and added products such as DevOps 360 Analytics, Automated Testing and Compliance. Renewing customers included Cox Automotive, Telstra and Volvo. To support this massive growth, Copado had a 75% increase in hiring in the first half of the year with plans to grow more than 125% in total by the end of FY2021.

     

    Copado DevOps training and certifications also enjoyed massive growth in the first half of the year with 12,000 new Salesforce DevOps specialists added globally and more than 1,000 DevOps consultants trained across the leading global SIs. Additionally, there have been thousands of certifications for the two official Salesforce Trailhead Modules on DevOps and Continuous Innovation that were created by Copado. This month, Copado launched its DevOps Hub, providing Salesforce professionals on their DevOps journey access to research, webinars, demos and training in a single location. The company is on track to certify 20,000 Salesforce DevOps professionals by the end of the year.
    “Copado now represents the largest ecosystem of Salesforce DevOps expertise in the world and continues its hyper growth trajectory based on the new realities of digital work and market demand,” said Ted Elliott, chief executive officer for Copado. “Digital transformation projects continue to be fast tracked at lightning speed, putting developers and IT departments in the hot seat to deliver new digital innovations while working remotely. Public sector agencies and commercial businesses are relying on Copado DevOps to bring those innovations to fruition. We are dedicated to helping our customers succeed at this critical time in their journey as they enter the new era of digital first business. Because we are helping organizations deliver digital transformation projects on time with the highest levels of trust and quality, we expect to continue our tremendous growth rate for the rest of the year.”
    About Copado
    Founded in 2013, Copado is a leading DevOps platform for Salesforce. For enterprises wanting to accelerate their Salesforce deployments, Copado simplifies the release process, increases developer productivity and maximizes return on investment. The platform is comprised of Agile Planning, Release Management and Compliance & Testing. Backed by Insight Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures, Copado counts more than 500 enterprises as customers, including Fair Trade, MassMutual, Shell and Vlocity. With more than 50 million transactions per month, Copado has received the top rating of 100 percent positive feedback on Salesforce AppExchange. More information can be found at: http://www.copado.com

  • Render Releases Major New Feature for Zero DevOps Cloud Hosting, Raises $4.5 Million in Funding

    SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Render, the Zero DevOps Cloud, today announced automatic preview environments which are essential for rapid and collaborative development of modern applications. By offering this feature to its customers, Render is further solidifying its position as a Zero DevOps alternative to AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, where users have to spend weeks of engineering effort to set up and maintain homegrown versions of this feature.

    Render offers an innovative public cloud alternative that developers love; it gives them the best of both worlds: instant setup and incredible ease of use, coupled with the power and flexibility previously afforded only by large cloud providers. It does this by offering an intuitive hosting platform that requires zero knowledge of servers and infrastructure and combining it with powerful containerization technology which enables customization, cost reduction and reliability at scale.

    The new automatic preview environments feature enables users to generate a complete replica of their production infrastructure for every pull request in their GitHub/GitLab repositories, empowering developer teams to test collaboratively with QA, product and sales teams and ship software faster and with fewer bugs.

    “We started using Render to leverage their automatic preview environments feature and quickly fell in love with the platform. We not only use preview environments to review PRs with product and marketing teams before they are merged but also to reproduce and debug customer issues and to create sandboxes for our sales teams. Render enables workflows that would be too complex and time consuming to spin up ourselves and supports the pace of innovation we require to focus on delivering and fast iteration,” said Travis Cooper, Lead Software Engineer at Cypress.io, the JavaScript end-to-end testing framework company.

    Render is trusted by tens of thousands of developers and teams from fast-growing tech startups like Cypress.io and Mux to popular consumer startups like Bloomscape and Zelos and established companies like 99designs and Stripe.

    Anurag Goel, founder and CEO of Render, said: “Render is all about eliminating DevOps and giving control back to developers, and preview environments are a major step forward. Developers no longer need to wait for sysadmins to create testing, demo or staging environments. Instead, they can simply enable the preview environments feature on Render and generate these environments automatically and keep them updated with every commit. They can test their changes with precision and confidence, and product, marketing and sales teams can see upcoming and proposed changes in live production-like environments that can be shared with all internal and external stakeholders.”

    Major Company Milestones

    • April 2019 Render launched with $2.25 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst with participation from the South Park Commons Fund
    • September 2019 Render competed against thousands of startups and won TechCrunch Disrupt SF’s Startup Battlefield for being the most promising early-stage and fundamentally disruptive startup
    • April 2020 Render surpassed one billion HTTP requests served monthly
    • May 2020 Render launched its first hosting region in Europe which reduced network latency for users based in Europe by as much as 70 percent
    • August 2020 Render began to partner with leading open source projects to launch single click deploys for its customers

    Today Render also announced $4.5 million in an extended seed funding round, bringing the total raised to $6.75 million. General Catalyst led the round, previous investor South Park Commons Fund participated as well as prominent angels including Lee Fixel, Elad Gil and GitHub CTO and former VP of Engineering at Heroku Jason Warner.

    “This latest release continues what has been a year of rapid evolution for Render’s Zero DevOps Cloud,” said Steve Herrod, Managing Director at General Catalyst. “We are proud to back the Render team and excited to see how they continue to deliver new capabilities that delight and empower developers.”

    About Render
    Render offers the easiest cloud to host any application or website. The company’s goal is to completely free up developers and startups from managing cloud infrastructure by building a cloud that offers the best developer experience coupled with incredible flexibility and power. This will ultimately improve all software and enable entirely new kinds of applications. Render is backed by General Catalyst and the South Park Commons Fund and based in San Francisco. For more information, go to https://render.com or follow @getrender.

  • Ubiq Launches Api-Based Encryption Platform For Application Developers

    Ubiq reduces the complex world of encryption to two API calls and three lines of code

    SAN DIEGO, CA – October 21, 2020 – Ubiq Security, a developer-focused security startup, today announced the launch of its API-based encryption platform for developers. The United States Army, Department of Homeland Security, Verizon, and Hitachi are among the first customers to streamline data protection and security using the Ubiq platform.

    Ubiq has eliminated the traditional complexities of encryption, allowing developers and information security teams – even those without encryption or cryptography expertise – to integrate data encryption directly into applications in minutes, with nothing more than a few lines of code and two API calls. Teams can encrypt data effortlessly across diverse applications and programming languages, cloud environments, and storage types.

    “Encryption is a critical part of security that’s historically been one of the hardest things to get right,” said Wias Issa, CEO of Ubiq. “There are very few true encryption and cryptography experts in the market, so most organizations lack the domain expertise to implement encryption effectively. Simplifying encryption down to a few lines of code and two API calls enables organizations to very quickly integrate encryption directly into their applications and empower their developers to build encryption directly into the software development lifecycle, reducing downstream costs and risk, and enabling them to spend their time and resources building fantastic products.”

    Behind the platform’s APIs is a SaaS-based software layer that eliminates the guesswork, jargon, and complexity of cryptography and encryption, through a simple dashboard, so developers can be up and running in just minutes. The dashboard allows developers (or members of their security teams) to select from proven, best-practice encryption models and policies for all their applications in a central location, provides key management and FIPS 140-2 Type 3 compliant key storage, and a complete log of key access and activity.

    “Implementing data encryption methods and practices across large enterprises can be fragmented or lead to one-off implementations,” said Rick Stewart, chief software technologist, DLT Solutions, a Tech Data company. “Ubiq’s platform strengthens our cybersecurity portfolio and provides our channel partners and their U.S. public sector customers with a centralized key management and storage solution with the ability to have a standard data encryption practice.”

    Ubiq offers a wide range of free and custom plans. For more information, visit www.ubiqsecurity.com.

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    About Ubiq Security

    Ubiq is a technology company that has simplified the complex and messy world of encryption through a set of APIs, that are simple enough for any developer to use, yet scalable and extensible enough to encrypt data effortlessly across diverse applications and programming languages, cloud environments, and storage types. By enabling developers to quickly integrate encryption into their applications, Ubiq is empowering innovators around the world to efficiently build more secure products and experiences. For more information, visit www.ubiqsecurity.com.

  • Database footprints and Database as a Service continue to grow, but many companies facing unexpected cloud bills, according to Percona

    • According to 2020 survey respondents, more than 20% of companies faced cloud costs above their budgets, 45% of companies are running DBaaS
    • Percona expands product and service catalog for open source databases and DBaaS, including support for PostgreSQL version 13, beta announcements for PostgreSQL managed services and the Percona Enterprise Platform.

    Raleigh, NC – October 20th, 2020 – Percona, a leader in open source database software and services, today announced the results of its Open Source Data Management Software Surveyfor 2020 at the Percona Live ONLINE conference. According to the results, the cost of cloud computing was flagged as a problem for many companies, with 22% of organizations facing additional unplanned costs from their cloud providers.

    The share of companies using Database as a Service (DBaaS) increased to 45% of respondents compared to 40% the previous year. More than half of large companies (56%) stated they use DBaaS. In line with the trend of companies looking to mitigate their risk, around half (28% of the total large company category) used more than one DBaaS service.

    Percona’s Open Source Data Management Software Survey for 2020 also includes the following key findings:

    • Decisions on open source database choice are centralizing
      • Architects are now the primary group in charge of making database deployment decisions, according to 41% of respondents.
      • The next group is developers with 26%. This shows that although many developers are still responsible for their organizations’ technology choices, this is starting to consolidate based on the need to manage support and management overheads.
    • Database growth is continuing apace
      • 82% of organizations saw their database footprint grow more than 5% per year.
      • For 12% of organizations, the volume of data they held doubled or more in twelve months.
    • For many organizations, upgrading cloud instances was a common occurrence
      • Around 28% required two to three upgrades, while 21% had more than ten upgrades, equating to a potential doubling of costs, per instance.
      • Conversely, only 12% of organizations made no changes to their instances.
    • Cloud spending and planning was mixed
      • Around 22% found that their cloud spending was above expected, while 60% found their cloud spending was about right. For 17%, their cloud spend was lower than expected.
    • Companies continue to adopt Kubernetes for application deployments and for their database environments
      • 47% of respondents use Kubernetes internally for development and testing of applications (up from 44%) and 36% use it for production applications (up from 32%).
      • The percentage of respondents who used Kubernetes to run databases also increased this year, with 36% using it for development and testing (up from 33%) and 23% using it for production (up from 17%).

    “For many organizations, growth around cloud and data has increased more than they expected. Keeping control over your data and your costs will be essential for everyone over time – using open source databases is one of the best ways to achieve this. However, the increasing popularity of DBaaS in this year’s results shows that many organizations are potentially unaware of all the issues that exist around cloud and lock-in. Combining Kubernetes and open source databases can help deliver the right mix of control, freedom, and flexibility when it comes to data,” said Peter Zaitsev, CEO at Percona.

    New product roadmap and updates

    As part of Percona Live, Percona announced several new products and services that expand its range of open source database offerings. Percona updated its Distribution for PostgreSQLusing the latest version of PostgreSQL, version 13, with improved performance through more efficient use of indexes and sorting capabilities and reduced resource usage. Also included is a technical preview of a custom extension pg_stat_monitor written by Percona. This extension gathers and aggregates query performance data, enabling better and faster query analysis. It can be used alone, but its capabilities are best used when combined with the latest release of Percona Monitoring and Management 2.11 enabling users to easily analyze their PostgreSQL queries.

    “At Percona, we appreciate all the hard work that has gone into the latest version of PostgreSQL from the whole community. We want to continue to support that community and so are pleased to update our Distribution of PostgreSQL to the latest version. This allows us to help enterprise companies ensure that the tools, add-ons, and extensions they require work together, are easy to deploy, are certified, and supported by a trusted vendor,” said Terri Schlosser, Director of Product at Percona.

    At the Percona Live event, the company also announced that Managed Services for PostgreSQL will be launching early next year and that the Percona Enterprise Platform Betawould be available for participation before the end of the year.

    The Percona Enterprise Platform will be a truly open source platform that does not lock users to a specific cloud service or platform. It will provide a single pane of glass to easily manage open source database infrastructures, and a self service experience to enable fast and consistent open source database deployments.

    “We are looking forward to sharing the Percona Enterprise Platform as part of our beta program, as this will provide us with valuable early feedback to shape the future direction of the platform. This project will take a phased approach so we can concentrate on different areas and work with as many beta testers as possible. Our initial focus will be on MySQL and MongoDB technologies, with PostgreSQL being added later in the process,” commented Schlosser.

    Percona Live ONLINE

    Running over 28 hours this edition of Percona Live ONLINE takes place on the 20th and 21st of October. It provides a mix of content around open source databases and software development topics including MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, plus other open source data projects such as ClickHouse, TiDB, MariaDB and Kunlun.

    Keynote speakers during the event include:

    • Peter Zaitsev, CEO at Percona – Why Public Database as a Service is Prime for Open Source Disruption
    • Bruce Momjian, Senior Enterprise Architect at EnterpriseDB – The Democratization of Databases
    • Karen Ambrose, Team Lead, Research Data Services/Databases at The Francis Crick Institute – The Technological Response to a Global Pandemic – The Francis Crick Institute COVID19 Consortium Diagnostic Pipeline
    • Liz Fong-Jones, Principal Developer Advocate at Honeycomb and Emily Gorcenski, Head of Data at Thoughtworks Germany – Organizing for Your Ethical Principles
    • Kimberly Wilkins, MongoDB Tech Lead at Percona  – The State of MongoDB, Its Open Source Community, and Where Percona Is Going With It
    • Frederic Descamps , MySQL Community Lead at Oracle – The State of The Dolphin

    All content will be made available after the event. For the full agenda and registration, visit https://www.percona.com/live/agenda 

    Links

  • Deque Releases Axe Accessibility Testing Tool for New Microsoft Edge Browser

    HERNDON, VA – October 22, 2020  – Deque Systems, the trusted leader in digital accessibility, today announced the release of the axe accessibility testing tool for Microsoft’s new Edge web browser.

    Like its Chrome and Firefox counterparts, axe for Edge is a simple to use, automated testing tool that helps developers identify and resolve common accessibility gaps that prevent or limit people with disabilities from interacting with websites and their contents. These accessibility defects, when left in place, prohibit people with visual, auditory, motor, speech or cognitive disabilities and their various assistive technologies to experience the full benefits of the web.

    Axe browser extensions are used by over 135,000 people each week, and utilize the industry-standard axe-core open-source rules library for WCAG and Section 508 accessibility. They return zero false positives, testing for problems that can be accurately detected via automation.

    “The axe extension helps developers catch over 50 percent of accessibility problems while coding, dramatically reducing the time and cost of manual accessibility testing,” says Dylan Barrell, Chief Technology Officer at Deque Systems. “Now development teams using Chrome, Firefox or Edge can easily check for accessibility defects right from the browser.”

    The free axe browser extension for Edge is available for download now at https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/axe-web-accessibility-t/kcenlimkmjjkdfcaleembgmldmnnlfkn.

    “We’re pleased to see yet another valuable extension like axe added to the Microsoft Edge browser ecosystem. Enabling developers to build accessible experiences in Microsoft Edge will benefit users everywhere,” says Ashish Poddar, Sr. Product Manager – Browser Experiences at Microsoft Edge.

    What is Digital Accessibility? Digital Accessibility is the practice of making digital documents, web and mobile apps accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Without the continuous use of features like captions, alt-text for screen readers, zoom functions, simple presentation layouts and more, digital content may be inconvenient or impossible to use.

    About Deque Systems

    Deque (pronounced dee-cue) is a web accessibility software and services company, and our mission is Digital Equality.  We believe everyone, regardless of their ability, should have equal access to the information, services, applications, and everything else on the web.

    We work with enterprise-level businesses and organizations to ensure that their sites and mobile apps are accessible. Installed in over 250,000 browsers and with over 1,000 audit projects completed, Deque is the industry standard.

  • Instana Releases Always-On Continuous Production Profiling for PHP and Python Applications

    Company Adds New Language Support to Only APM Solution to Include Automatic Performance Profiling

    Instana, a leading provider of APM and Observability Solutions for Cloud-Native and microservice applications, today announced the availability of always-on profiling for production PHP and Python applications. With the addition of this production profiling support, Instana becomes the first APM solution to provide automatic continuous production profiling of Java, GoLang, Python and PHP with a common interface and correlated with production application monitoring and tracing for better analysis.

    This latest language support builds on Instana’s integration of technology acquired from the company’s acquisition of StackImpact last year. It marks the third release of integrated product from the two solutions in 2020. Instana APM customers get unlimited use of production profiling, with no additional charges. Enabling the capabilities simply requires a change to the Instana configuration file. No application re-starts are required to turn profiling on or off.

    “The complexity of today’s applications is directly related to the polyglot of application languages being used,” said Chris Farrell, APM and Observability Strategist at Instana. “Instana’s ability to extend the automatic capturing of profiles to Python and PHP gives dev teams the data they need to optimize performance solve code issues quickly.”

    Instana’s production profiling solution differs from other profiling tools in that it is always on, designed and built with such low overhead that can always capture profiles on every production process. Those profiles are correlated with other Instana metrics, including application service levels, traces of all individual requests and full-stack infrastructure metrics. The company’s Unbounded Analytics™ allows anyone to dive into any layer and quickly isolate and fix problems when they occur.

    Instana’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated Application Performance Monitoring, discovers and maps all services, infrastructure and their inter-dependencies automatically. Instana ingests all observability metrics, traces each request, profiles every process and updates application dependency maps in real time to deliver the context and actionable feedback needed by Dev+Ops to optimize application performance, enable innovation and mitigate risk to help them add value and efficiency to the pipeline.

    Instana’s continuous profiling for PHP and Python, as well as Java and Go, are available today in all Instana solutions, including their SaaS and on-prem versions. Learn more at https://instana.com/profiling.

    ABOUT INSTANA

    Instana is the leading provider of Observability and Application Performance Management solutions for Cloud-Native Microservice applications. The company’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated APM, ingests all observability metrics, traces every request and profiles all processes continuously and automatically, delivering the actionable information with full context to Dev+Ops to help them optimize their application performance and pipelines. Learn more at https://instana.com.

     

  • SmartBear Announces Investment from Vista Equity Partners

    Vista to partner with SmartBear and existing investor Francisco Partners to accelerate product development and growth
    Somerville, Mass. — Oct. 21, 2020 — SmartBear, a leading provider of software development and quality tools, announced today that it has secured a significant investment from Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”), a leading global investment firm focused on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses. Francisco Partners, a leading global technology-focused investment firm, will continue as an investor with Vista and Francisco Partners as equal owners of the company.

    SmartBear, which was acquired by Francisco Partners in 2017, is based in the greater Boston area and provides software development solutions used by more than 15 million developers, testers and operations engineers at over 24,000 organizations. SmartBear solutions support the rapidly growing DevOps market and include innovative technologies around API lifecycle management, test automation, test management, performance optimization and collaboration. These solutions are used by leading organizations to accelerate the design, development and release of higher-quality software at scale.

    “Speaking on behalf of everyone at SmartBear, I am thrilled to welcome Vista as investors,” said Frank Roe, CEO of SmartBear. “Having the significant backing of two leading PE firms demonstrates the tremendous track record our products and employees have delivered so far, as well as the growth and demand in our markets. As every company is rapidly transforming to digital-first, we’re seeing a dramatically increasing demand for SmartBear solutions from developers, testers and entire organizations focused on consistently delivering high-quality software at the speed that business demands.”

    SmartBear solutions span the entire software delivery lifecycle and enable organizations to reduce costs and accelerate time to market. Vista’s capital investment in SmartBear, along with the firm’s deep experience partnering with world-class enterprise software companies and their leadership teams, will enable SmartBear to broaden and strengthen its solutions as well as identify opportunities for continued organic and inorganic growth.

    “The SmartBear suite of best-in-class DevOps solutions and its commitment to open source communities is a validation of the strength of its products and positions the company for continued growth in this rapidly accelerating market,” said Michael Fosnaugh, Co-Head of Vista Flagship Fund and Senior Managing Director of Vista. “We look forward to partnering with Frank and the SmartBear team along with Francisco Partners to continue providing innovative and valuable solutions to software teams around the world.”

    Brian Decker, Partner, and Evan Daar, Principal at Francisco Partners, remarked, “Since our investment in SmartBear, the company has built an impressive track record as a market-leading platform in the large and growing DevOps market.”

    “Frank and the SmartBear team have shown a tremendous ability to accelerate organic and inorganic growth over the last few years and we are excited to continue the journey with the company alongside Vista,” added David Golob, Chief Investment Officer at Francisco Partners.Evercore acted as lead financial advisor to Francisco Partners and SmartBear on the transaction with Shea & Company also advising. Paul Hastings LLP served as legal advisor to SmartBear, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal advisor for Vista.

    About Vista Equity Partners

    Vista is a leading global investment firm with more than $58 billion in cumulative capital commitments. The firm exclusively invests in enterprise software, data and technology-enabled organizations across private equity, credit, public equity and permanent capital strategies, bringing an approach that prioritizes creating enduring market value for the benefit of its global ecosystem of investors, companies, customers and employees. Vista’s investments are anchored by a sizable long-term capital base, experience in structuring technology-oriented transactions and proven, flexible management techniques that drive sustainable growth. Vista believes the transformative power of technology is the key to an even better future – a healthier planet, a smarter economy, a diverse and inclusive community and a broader path to prosperity. Further information is available at vistaequitypartners.com. Follow Vista on LinkedIn @Vista Equity Partners.

    About Francisco Partners

    Francisco Partners is a leading global investment firm that specializes in partnering with technology and technology-enabled businesses. Since its launch 20 years ago, Francisco Partners has raised over $24 billion in committed capital and invested in more than 300 technology companies, making it one of the most active and longstanding investors in the technology industry. The firm invests in opportunities where its deep sectoral knowledge and operational expertise can help companies realize their full potential. For more information on Francisco Partners, please visit www.franciscopartners.com.

    About SmartBear

    At SmartBear, we focus on your one priority that never changes: quality. We know delivering quality software over and over is complicated. So our tools are built to streamline your process while seamlessly working with the products you use – and will use. Whether it’s TestComplete, Swagger, Cucumber, ReadyAPI, Zephyr, or one of our other tools, we span from test automation, API design, collaboration, performance testing, test management, and more. Whichever you need, they’re easy to try, easy to buy, and easy to integrate. We’re used by 15 million developers, testers, and operations engineers at over 24,000 organizations – including world-renowned innovators like Adobe, JetBlue, FedEx, and Microsoft. Wherever you’re going, we’ll help you get there. Learn more at smartbear.com, or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.