Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites

Software testing is one of the key processes in the delivery of applications. The market has been steadily maturing to deliver improved user success, but technology changes such as agile practices, mobile computing and cloud platforms can disrupt vendor evaluation for testers and test managers. The automated software quality (ASQ) assurance market is a subsegment of the overall software development life cycle market. It is composed of three traditional areas: ■ Test management — Tools to manage and plan testing activities and their results. ■ Automated stress and load testing — Tools that simulate the load of multiple users against a server-based application to understand and tune performance. ■ Automated functional and regression testing — Tests that mimic a single user to find defects in the application. Software quality encompasses a much broader number of activities than these, and thought leaders are driving broader solutions and creating integration across the life cycle. These key software testing facilities are our core focus in this Magic Quadrant, but it is important to consider other areas, including test data selection and management, unit testing, security and compliance, cross-browser testing, and usability. We expect to see strong demand and growth in the market for testing mobile applications, and the leading tool providers are beginning to address this either by product expansion or by partnerships. Expect acquisitions during the next three years as mobile requires more than an extension of existing tools and represents an inflection point in the market. We did not include any of the mobile-only testing providers in this report, because they fall under our revenue guidelines and we believe most purchases at this point will remain tactical. The market is also evolving to better support packaged applications, as well as new technologies that are at the foundation of cloud and composite applications. Another driver in the market is the move toward agile practices, which have been spreading from developers to include the whole team. This is putting pressure on teams to improve automation, not only of testing but of the provisioning of test labs and the release of software into the lab. We expect this change to create a diversity of testing