SOASTA, the startup that made its name in cloud-based load testing, is buying LogNormal, which measures the performance of mobile and web applications. The acquisition, SOASTA’s first, is scheduled to be announced Tuesday at the same time SOASTA unveils mPulse, a new product that incorporates LogNormal technologies.
SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos
mPulse promises to give developers and their companies a real-time glimpse into how their application is actually working in the field. A spinning globe dashboard shows all connections in real-time and users can drill down to the household level to see what device is running the application and how it’s performing. Latency issues, for example, will show up.
“Web and mobile apps have different useability issues — things like the placement of buttons really matter in mobile — so we give a far higher level of intelligence about how the apps are used,” Lounibos said.
Up till now, Mountain View, CA-based SOASTA has been known for helping companies make sure their web sites can handle big loads — the video feeds from the London Olympics and the the Mars Rover landing are two examples. Now it’s bulking up its ability to load test mobile applications as they’re being used in real time.
mPulse features include real-time activity analytics, data visualization, role-based alerting, the company said. SOASTA was already working with LogNormal on the product when they decided a deal was in order.
One-year-old LogNormal was founded by Buddy Brewer and Philip Tellis who helped create Boomerang, a popular open source real user measurement (RUM) tool.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Feature photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Cienpies Design
