Oracle buying Web app test tools from Empirix

March 27, 2008, 02:41 PM —  IDG News Service — 

Fresh off a strong
third-quarter earnings report
, Oracle announced Thursday that it has agreed
to acquire a set of Web application testing products from Empirix for an undisclosed
sum.

Oracle plans to make Empirix's e-TEST suite "a core component" of
its Enterprise Manager product.

Empirix, based in Bedford, Massachusetts, will retain control of the business
until the agreement is finalized, according to Oracle. The company also makes
testing products for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and IP multimedia subsystems
(IMS).

"The acquisition of e-TEST suite is expected to strengthen Oracle Enterprise
Manager with application load and functional testing technology, and enable
Oracle to provide comprehensive application management life cycle solutions,"
said Leng Leng Tan, vice president of applications and systems management for
Oracle, in a prepared letter to customers.

In other documents made available on Thursday, Oracle said e-TEST suite is
"proven" and being used by more than 685 customers in industries such
as financial services, insurance and manufacturing.

E-TEST suite components include e-Manager Enterprise, for developing and organizing
test processes; e-Tester, for building test scripts; and e-Load, for load and
performance testing of Web applications.

Empirix products are "highly compatible" with Oracle's, and hundreds
of its customers have used them successfully, Oracle said.

Michael Cote, an analyst with Redmonk, said he was not familiar with Empirix
but suggested Oracle's pending purchase may hint at a bigger-picture strategy.

"All I can say is that the IT management world is keeping their eye on
Oracle to become a bigger player in IT management," he said Thursday. "So
far, Oracle is focused on providing management for Oracle stuff -- which there's
plenty of to worry about -- but stuff like this could expand them out more into
general performance testing and monitoring."

Empirix has more than 350 employees worldwide, according to its Web site. Its
Web application-testing employees "have significant domain experience in
application testing" and "will be an integral part of the applications
and systems management business within Oracle," Oracle said.

IDG News Service

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Free books

Essential JavaFX
Get started building rich Web apps quickly with an introduction to the power of JavaFX key features -- scene node graphs, nodes as components, the coordinate system, layout options, colors and gradients, custom classes with inheritance, animation, binding, and event handlers.Enter now!

The Nomadic Developer
Consulting can be hugely rewarding, but it's easy to fail if you are unprepared. To succeed, you need a mentor who knows the lay of the land. Aaron Erickson is your mentor, and this is your guidebook. Enter now!

Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace