In the mobile-first, apps-driven world speed and quality are the table stakes and HP is looking to deal itself a winning hand with Mobile Center, an on-premise solution for testing mobile application functionality and performance across real-world network conditions on real-devices. The company said mobile app developers require solutions that can rapidly adapt and test new environments, and that connect to their overall application lifecycle management strategies.
Now shipping, the solution is intended to address the critical need for a consistent and enjoyable app experience, said Genefa Murphy, Sr. Director, Application Delivery Management HP Software. “Only HP can deliver a unique blend of domain expertise, big data analytics, and seamless integration with an overall application lifecycle management suite to enable mobile DevOps teams to predict how an application will respond in the real world, no matter the device, OS or context,” she said in a prepared statement.
We want to help out customers essentially extend best practices to mobile devices, “because there are so many nuances that come about on the real device,” she told IT Trends & Analysis in a phone briefing. “We’re bringing in the real device element and making sure the app is going to behave in the real world as you expect”.
Charlie Dai, Principal Consultant, Forrester Research, think it’s time for technology decision-makers and enterprise architects to seriously consider adopting mobile app delivery management solutions and to evaluate HP for that purpose. Although his new blog was targeted at the Chinese networking market, where HP is rumored to be looking to sell at least 51% of its corporate-networking business in the country, H3C Technologies Co, he said HP’s portfolio now covers the entire mobile app life cycle, from app design, development, and optimization to distribution and monitoring.
‘At the mobile app optimization stage, HP’s Mobile Center uses a comprehensive approach to functionality, interoperability, usability, performance, and security to consolidate and automate mobile testing.’ He noted from an interoperability perspective, the product can simulate exceptional conditions such as voice or SMS interruptions and resource conflicts with camera or GPS apps. It also supports peripheral testing of components including near field communication, Bluetooth, and iBeacon.
According to a recent SolarWinds survey, application performance matters. “It’s no longer just about if an application working, it’s about that application working to end user expectations,” said SolarWinds Products and Markets EVP Suaad Sait. “These survey results should be a wakeup call for IT pros everywhere.”
Key findings included:
-93% of business end users said application performance and availability affect their ability to do their job, with 62% saying it is absolutely critical, and 67% saying it has become more important over the past five years;
-20% said slow or unavailable applications result in significant financial loss (tens of thousands of dollars or more) for their companies annually;
-67% expect application performance or availability problems to be resolved within an hour of reporting them, with 35% expecting a resolution in a half hour or less; and,
-36% have waited a full business day or more for performance or availability problems with business-critical applications to be resolved, with 22% having waited several business days or more.
Murphy said customers tend to favor agile development, because an app failure can be very public, and can quickly escalate as a problem. Not only can organizations roll out better apps faster, but in the event there defects, they can let the users know. And set the right expectations.
Initially Mobile Center will only address the Apple iOS and Android platforms, but Murphy said HP will be adding Windows support later in 2015. “Mobile is one of the big bets we’re making at HP,” she said, and the company will continue to evolve its support matrix. In addition to adding other platforms and devices, as indicated by market demand, HP will work with its partners to provide a managed cloud offering to complement the on-premise solution.
In other news, HP announced the adoption of the IT4IT open standard for its IT Management software portfolio. Providing vendors, service providers, and businesses with a common blueprint to guide all products and solutions for interoperability, compliance and business insight, IT4IT is intended to help customers reduce complexity and speed integration and delivery of business services and applications.
The company also unveiled the IT4IT-based HP Reference Architecture to ensure the compliance of HP Software products. Software products and services already aligned with the standard include:
-HP Propel – provides users a unified, consumer-oriented services shopping experience;
-HP Enterprise Maps – helps identify waste and redundancies to successfully drive IT transformation;
-HP IT Management Transformation Workshop – offers consulting, custom development and integration services to bring IT services up to date with modern architectures and platforms; and,
-HP IT Management Value Discovery Workshop – provides strategic guidance to HP customers on how to assess, rationalize, position and recommend next steps for their IT infrastructure portfolio.
The Fiddly Bits (& Bytes)
Providing instant feedback to a DevOps lifecycle team, helping them understand how an app will perform across any device or OS, HP Mobile Center allows organizations to:
-support simulated and real-world testing to best understand usability, design and defects across any device, OS or network;
-understand when transactional services are working securely and properly;
-measure and simulate the impact of load using a combination of real devices and virtual users, for realistic assessment;
-gain insight into how end customers are using the application to get actionable data to improve development;
-determine response times, speed and quality of an application across real world devices;
-accurately capture and share critical defect information of a device; and,
-integrate mobile testing into existing application life cycle management (ALM) infrastructures.
The solution integrates with HP’s Application Lifecycle Management suite including HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), HP Sprinter, HP Unified Functional testing (UFT), HP LoadRunner, HP Performance Center, HP Network Virtualization, and HP AppPulse Mobile.
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