Sauce Labs Buys API Fortress
December
15, 2020
Sauce Labs has acquired API Fortress, a provider of modern API testing
solutions for agile and DevOps teams. The acquisition addresses a critical need
for customers by enabling them to quickly, easily, and continuously test the API
endpoints that make up the core of modern API-driven applications. The API
Fortress platform enables customers to transform their API development
processes, accelerate releases, and reduce risk in the software development
lifecycle. With the addition of API Fortress, Sauce Labs now offers an even
richer and more comprehensive testing experience, one that includes API testing
in addition to functional UI testing, visual end-to-end testing, and front-end
performance testing, as well as real-time test insights and analytics.
“We’re thrilled to welcome the people and products of API Fortress to Sauce
Labs,” said Aled Miles, president and CEO, Sauce Labs. “Sauce Labs is committed
to helping organizations grow their digital confidence by providing them the
testing platform they need to deliver a flawless and trusted experience to their
customers. Today’s announcement is further evidence of that commitment and we
look forward to a bright future for API Fortress and its customers as part of
the growing Sauce Labs team.”
The acquisition of API Fortress complements Sauce Labs existing functional UI
testing capabilities by enabling customers to address one of the biggest
challenges they typically face with traditional UI testing. Customers running
functional UI tests on the Sauce Labs platform will be able to leverage API
Fortress to quickly and easily determine if there are issues at the API level
that require a more targeted set of API tests, and if so, to generate and
execute those tests using a powerful set of API testing capabilities available
directly from Sauce Labs.
“As functional UI testing and targeted API testing go hand-in-hand in the modern
era of API-driven applications, Sauce Labs is the perfect long-term home for all
that we started building at API Fortress,” said Patrick Poulin, co-founder and
CEO, API Fortress, who will join the Sauce Labs product leadership team. “We’re
honored to be part of Sauce Labs and we’re eager to join with their world-class
development and customer success teams to deliver the comprehensive testing
experience digital businesses need to grow and thrive.”
Solving an acute developer pain point
In the early days of application development, web applications made just a small
number of API requests to required microservices. With fewer API endpoints to
track down, a functional test failure caused by an out-of-date API was
relatively easy to identify and debug, making the need for targeted API testing
far less acute. As modern software development has progressed, however, web apps
have become far more API-driven, and the number of APIs communicating with
various microservices has exploded.
In the absence of targeted API testing, QA teams generally have no way of
knowing whether a front-end functional test has failed due to a broken endpoint
or a bug in the application code itself, meaning the arduous and time-consuming
task of identifying and debugging the failure falls to developers. Deployments
can grind to a halt while developers chase down broken services they’re not
responsible for maintaining. But with API testing as part of a comprehensive
continuous testing platform, testers and developers gain immediate insight into
how and when APIs break.
“As modern web apps continue to become more API-driven than ever before,
developers and QA professionals must collaborate around the API to build
high-quality applications, including and especially when it comes to testing,”
said John Kelly, CTO, Sauce Labs. “The acquisition of API Fortress adds another
tool to the Sauce Labs portfolio that facilitates greater collaboration between
testers and developers and is yet another proof point of the significant
investment we’re making to support the developer community.”
Modern API testing with API Fortress
API testing with API Fortress enables customers and partners to significantly
shorten test sprints, improve code quality, and monitor functional uptime. The
API Fortress platform features an API-first design that enables it to easily
integrate with the tools integral to building and testing APIs and to seamlessly
mesh with existing DevOps toolchains. API Fortress empowers developers to work
in parallel with QA and testing teams throughout the API lifecycle.
The API Fortress platform gives customers the ability to:
Easily create and edit functional tests. API Fortress users can automatically
generate their first API test in seconds.
Monitor performance, uptime, and functional uptime of live APIs. API Fortress
users can accurately track the true uptime of APIs through functional tests and
quickly diagnose API problems before they are discovered by end-users or
cybercriminals.
Build API mocks manually or automatically from live API traffic. API Fortress
users can expedite new API deliveries and minimize the effects of unreliable
internal environments with API mocking.
Create a Load Test in as little as 15 seconds. API Fortress unifies functional
and nonfunctional API testing, allowing users to use existing functional tests
as load tests.