I’m going to start this article with a couple of questions for anyone involved in software testing:
- Question 1: How do you access all the devices and browsers you need to test against?
- Question 2: How long until your setup is out of date?
If you’re anything like most companies, getting your kit is a pain and it’s out of date almost as soon as you start testing!
It’s generally accepted that maintaining a thorough and robust test lab is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Well, there is now a simple way to make it much easier and cheaper…
Introducing UFT Digital Lab
UFT Digital Lab is the exciting new mobile device test tool from OpenText (previously Micro Focus). Digital Lab enables manual, automated and performance testing on connected devices, cloud-sourced devices, emulators, and cloud desktop browsers.
No matter what size your company or project, if you need to test desktop, mobile, and/or tablet browsers and apps, then Digital Labs will make your life much easier.
Digital Lab is a standalone product that forms part of the OpenText ValueEdge suite, as such it integrates with the widest possible range of test and strategy tools. It is built on the shoulders of UFT Mobile but is a lot more than just a name change.
As OpenText themselves describe it: “Our enterprise-level solution is a complete, centralized lab of real mobile devices and emulators. With remote access, developers and testers can develop, debug, test, monitor, and optimize mobile apps from anywhere.”
I’ve been involved in mobile testing for many years, and this is a genuinely exciting development in the available tech stack. If you’re testing multiple devices, you will want to look at UFT Digital Lab.
What Can You Do With UFT Digital Lab?
In a nutshell, UFT Digital Lab lets you easily test your apps and websites on any platform, from anywhere in the world.
Connect Mobile Devices
Digital Lab lets you connect your physical devices directly to your servers, desktops and/or laptops. You can then control these devices and execute tests and debugging directly from your computer, without needing to fiddle around with the mobile device. These devices can be accessed by any machine that is connected to your Digital Lab server.
Utilise Emulators and Simulators
Of course, not all testing needs to be done on connected physical devices. Anyone who has done even rudimentary device testing knows that physically hosting every device/OS combination quickly becomes impractical.
Because of this, Digital Lab offers additional ways to support device testing. This includes allowing you to connect the following locally installed emulators/simulators:
- Android AVD emulators
- Genymotion desktop-emulated devices
- iOS simulators
Access Cloud Devices
To add even more flexibility, Digital Labs also supported cloud-hosted devices and emulators. This means you can quickly ramp up additional devices that might have been late editions to scope, edge cases, or just devices or emulators you don’t want to commit to. Whatever your reason, Digital Lab makes it easy to connect to a wide range of cloud solutions including
- OpenText Hosted Devices
- AWS Device Farm
- Genymotion Cloud Android Emulators
- WeTest Tencent Devices
Functional and Performance Testing
Digital Lab is not just for functional testing, it also allows you to performance test the user experience of your solution.
A great way to do this is to test a few devices while generating load on the back end with a tool from the LoadRunner family. You can then execute your test processes on your devices or emulators concurrently while using Network Virtualization to simulate real-work network conditions.
Digital Lab is Available as both SaaS and On-Premises
There are several different licence options for Digital Lab, each with different levels of functionality and integration to suit your needs. From entry-level to enterprise-level. On-premises options or a SaaS licence model.
UFT Digital Lab is The Only Mobile Device Testing Tool You Will Ever Need
Mobile testing is more important, and more challenging than ever before. User expectations are higher than ever, and the level of competition is unparalleled. For mobile solutions to succeed, they need to be virtually flawless, and that means rigorous testing.
UFT Digital Lab gives you the power to easily carry out functional and performance testing on the widest possible range of local and cloud devices and emulators. It is the only solution you will ever need and is a real game-changer for mobile testing.
This update is hot off the press and we have not yet added UFT Digital Lab to our website, however, we will shortly. For now, here is a link to the UFT Mobile page.
