Perfecto Brings Mobility To Microsoft TFS

Perfecto Mobile, a provider of cloud-based testing, automation and monitoring solutions for mobile applications and websites, announced that it has extended Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server to mobile with the launch of MobileCloud for TFS.

Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a Microsoft product offering source control, data collection, reporting and project tracking, and is intended for collaborative software development projects. It is available either as stand-alone software or as the server-side back-end platform for Visual Studio.

Mobile app testing

MobileCloud for TFS extends Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2012 to the mobile world. Perfecto Mobile, a member of the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program, has integrated its mobile app testing and quality solution into Microsoft’s application lifecycle management (ALM) tool.

Ensuring software quality through automating testing, reporting and results tracking and then monitoring performance in deployed software are crucial aspects of successful ALM.

Perfect Mobile has developed a cloud-based solution for cross-platform application testing on actual mobile devices – multiple devices on multiple carriers and in multiple geographies, not just on an emulator or virtual machine. It also integrates both the execution and the reporting and tracking of test results into TFS.

This is a big step forward in bringing robust, enterprise-grade ALM to mobile developers, Microsoft officials said.

“Perfecto Mobile’s integration of robust, cloud-deployed cross-platform mobile testing into Team Foundation Server is a tremendous step forward in bringing enterprise-grade ALM practices to mobile developers,” Mitra Azizirad, general manager of developer tools at Microsoft, told eWEEK. “Working together, Visual Studio, TFS and Perfecto Mobile’s test solution increase the speed and efficiency of developers releasing high-quality code on modern mobile platforms.”

Project management

“With the use of mobile apps and devices growing in business environments, enterprise software developers are looking for end-to-end mobile quality enablement capabilities in their ALM solutions,” said Tom Lindeman, director of the VSIP programme at Microsoft, in a statement. “We are pleased that Perfecto Mobile will offer ‘MobileCloud for TFS’ as part of the company’s commitment to providing cloud-based testing and monitoring solutions that help TFS users attain a more comprehensive ALM solution for mobile apps.”

MobileCloud for TFS enables manual and automated testing of mobile applications and the management of these testing procedures directly from Microsoft TFS. This allows users to extend projects managed in Microsoft TFS into the mobile space, including test execution, reporting, tracking and collaboration.

“Automated mobile testing is one of the key areas of growth in developer cloud services,” said Al Hilwa, an IDC analyst. “In fact, testing was one of the early movers to cloud as a category, thanks to the need for dynamically scalable and often transient workloads. Perfecto appears to be striking strong partnerships to broaden the audience for its technology. As the PC goes mobile, and Microsoft’s phone platform gets more traction, it is important to have a strong mobile development and testing stack for Microsoft developers.”

With MobileCloud for TFS, enterprises can enable agile mobile product deployments directly from TFS with a continuous integration process and bridge tools and resources from the mobile space to Microsoft’s ALM tools.

“Companies are recognising that the software quality market has rapidly expanded into the mobile space,” said Eran Yaniv, chief executive and founder of Perfecto Mobile, in a statement. “By offering MobileCloud for TFS we are dramatically enhancing our customers’ mobile application development process. This collaboration continues our mission to enable true end-to-end quality of mobile engagement so that our enterprise customers can deploy our mobile products and services with confidence.”

Broad availability

Perfecto Mobile’s MobileCloud enables developers and testers, located anywhere in the world, to access a broad range of the latest mobile handsets and tablets via the Internet. Users can develop, test, deploy and monitor their mobile applications and services without having to physically obtain the handsets.

The MobileCloud handsets and tablets are connected to live cellular networks in the United States, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Israel and India.

Among Perfecto Mobile customers are Vodafone, Swisscom, Motorola and other enterprises in the travel, finance, retail, telecom and other industries.

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Originally published on eWeek.