An established load testing and performance monitoring powerhouse in Europe, Stockholm, Sweden-based Apica is entering the U.S. market, opening offices in Palo Alto, Calif., and expanding its cloud portfolio. Apica Watch is a new cloud service that gives customers the ability to monitor their websites from an end user perspective, and the Apica iPhone application provides users with a performance monitoring solution 24/7 from anywhere. The company has also announced a partnership with RightScale, a leader in cloud computing management.
Founded in 2005, Apica has more than 250 customers, including Newsday, PricewaterhouseCoopers, eBay Sweden and Thomas Cook. Its WebExcellence Suite for testing, monitoring and optimizing cloud and mobile applications includes Apica LoadTest, Apica WebPerformance and Apica WebOverload. The company uses Selenium, an open source software testing framework for web applications that lets customers generate, create and run scripts representing complex user scenarios. It takes a cloud-centric approach, which fits in well with its U.S. plans, where it sees a big opportunity for providing cloud testing services.
What Apica is bringing to the market is a company focused on the performance, both pre-production and production, of applications, says Theresa Lanowitz, founder and analyst, Voke. “The performance aspect of applications has traditionally been an afterthought, or many organizations felt they did not have the skills to handle performance. A company dedicated to making performance and monitoring solutions accessible and available to organizations of all sizes and skill levels is critical, especially as applications continue to grow in complexity.”
This is a big undertaking, she says. “Apica’s three-pronged cloud-based approach of load testing, web performance monitoring and the controller to handle back end traffic overloading databases is a clear indication that the company understands overall performance issues, as well as the science and mathematics behind software engineering of applications.”
Lanowitz says this announcement gives the market a clear view of what Apica’s vision for performance solutions is about. “And, because of Apica’s cloud-based model, there are two big benefits to customers. One, the subscription pricing model is simple and easy to understand and budget for. Two, users of the Apica offerings are always on the latest version of the product.”
