Mu Dynamics Launches First Scale Testing Solution for Next Generation Network Services

SUNNYVALE, Calif., July 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Mu Dynamics, Inc. (www.mudynamics.com), the leader in testing next-generation network services, today announced Mu Studio Scale, the first solution to replicate customer usage scenarios for scale testing NGN services including triple play, feature-rich mobile applications and the cloud. This unique solution saves wired and wireless network equipment vendors, government agencies and service providers months in development time and millions of dollars in production costs by quickly isolating performance and scalability bottlenecks as services are developed and deployed.

Mu's unique approach to testing allows test cases to be generated from actual service interactions. Mu's patent-pending Active Service Replication (ASR) technology transforms the actual service interactions into parameterized test scenarios, which allows the testing of applications, services and the application-aware network. With this approach, customers can automatically generate tailor-made test cases replicating the actual mobile application, service and underlying network infrastructure.

"Being able to run scale tests of hundreds of thousands of users using thousands of different applications across many end points allows us to put our sophisticated next-generation firewall through its paces," said Nir Zuk, founder and CTO of Palo Alto Networks. "Our value-add to our customers is the ability to identify and control applications and content, so being able to quickly replicate the ever-growing set of applications for our testing saves us months of time and significant amounts of resources in bringing our products to market. It also dramatically increases our confidence in the success rate of new deployments as we can identify and fix real-life issues well in advance."

"The sampling of workloads and playing them back at scale is the only viable way to loadtest modern cloud infrastructures," said Chris Anderson, co-founder, Couchio. "In the real world, each deployment is unique which traditionally means when an issue comes up, we either spend time and money duplicating the production load, or, while flying blind, apply optimization patches to live servers. The Mu solution automates this expensive and time consuming process, allowing us to optimize CouchDB against actual workloads, without subjecting real users to untested patches."

Common scenarios that can now be tested using the Mu solution include:

• Thousands of people making calls on the Android™ or iPhone® mobile platforms
• Migrating mission critical applications to a virtualized environment
• A city-wide rollout of an on-demand video service
• Thousands of support calls into a VoIP call center
• Thousands of users accessing cloud-based voice, data or content delivery applications

"Networks have transformed, applications are proliferating, virtualization and cloud deployments are accelerating. But until now customers have been limited to testing their applications, services and infrastructure using legacy 'bit-blasting' network protocol testing tools that generate synthetic traffic from canned tests. When these services go live, they then run into serious issues because the testing did not truly replicate the environments into which these solutions are deployed," said Dave Kresse, Mu's CEO. "If you're not using actual service interactions to test your services, then your testing is insufficient.  We see evidence of this every day in the form of public outages and dissatisfied consumers."

"Today's vendors and service providers are faced with competing pressures. First, they need to deliver new services to market as soon as possible in order to compete effectively. However, they are also aware that an outstanding customer experience is critical, and that means lots of quality testing before a solution can be delivered. Mu's Studio enables organizations to reconcile these pressures," said Olga Yashkova, Industry Analyst for Test & Measurement at Frost & Sullivan.  "I can think of half a dozen recent telecom service disasters that could have been avoided if Mu Studio had been used prior to delivery. When it comes to testing for scalability, performance or functionality under load, Mu's Studio is the key solution I've identified that can truly test today's rich services and mobile applications."

Mu Studio Scale Key Capabilities

Mu Studio Scale includes the following key capabilities:

• Active Service Replication (ASR), the technology that transforms actual service interactions into parameterized tests scenarios against live servers or application-aware gateways
• Real-time performance monitors that provide insight into how the service or application is behaving at scale to proactively identify bottlenecks
• Integration into the Mu Test Suite which allows the same test scenarios to be leveraged for scale, functional, regression, resilience and security testing

Mu Dynamics is offering a complimentary webinar on July 29, at 10 a.m. (PST) on why using actual service interactions is the only effective way to test today's NGN services. To register, please click here.

Mu Studio Scale is available today. For more information visit http://www.mudynamics.com/products/Mu-Test-Suite/scale-testing.html.

About Mu Dynamics:

Mu Dynamics is the leader in testing NGN services, enabling customers to meet the challenges of deploying services for the iGeneration. Unlike legacy testing tools, Mu transforms actual service interactions into test scenarios using our patent-pending Active Service Replication (ASR) technology. Mu allows customers to accurately test complex services including triple play, mobile and cloud, empowering them to innovate with confidence and deliver high quality services.

Founded in 2005, Mu today has over 100 customers including the top five global operators, leading technology companies, and numerous government agencies.

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, more information on Mu's products, solutions, and customers are online at http://www.mudynamics.com.

SOURCE Mu Dynamics, Inc.