Overview
TestPlant is an international software business with its HQ in the City of London. Described topically as a “micronational”, TestPlant is noted for its high-tech, high growth and export orientated activity. The company is the maker of eggPlant, the leading software testing tool which automates the traditionally manual process of software testing and validation. eggPlant is used by some 500 organisations worldwide in defense and security, aerospace and aviation, healthcare and life sciences, finance and retail and in the IT, telecoms and media industries. TestPlant was formed in 2008 and acquired the original developer of eggPlant, Redstone Software. The company has a development centre in Boulder, Colorado and a presence in Washington DC. The founders, chairman Jon Richards and Chief Executive George Mackintosh, are supported by an experienced Board of Directors, a powerful Executive Team and by the venture capital firm and its partners, Seraphim Capital.
Our market
Software controls almost every part of our daily lives. It is essential to our national security and travel, to our social lives in communication and entertainment and in the management of our business and domestic financial affairs. In many instances software failure is highly damaging. The elimination of bugs, the validation of how software integrates with other software and how it actually appears and functions on-screen demanded rigorous testing before its public release. That arduous process is traditionally done manually by software test engineers. These good people are expensive, in short supply and fallible; thorough testing takes time, but is often left to the last-minute and squeezed by impending release deadlines and manual processes are difficult to scale while prone to inconsistencies and error.
The software development and testing community already widely recognises that testing should be automated wherever possible. However, few if any tools have been available to replicate the intelligent human eye and it ability to find, see and respond to events on the computer display screen. This type of testing is referred to as user experience, user interface, GUI or functional testing and TestPlant’s technology provides an automated solution.
Our technology
eggPlant is an intelligent robotic test tool capable of seeing the display on the systems under test. Our image recognition algorithm can be trained to spot any variances in expected outcomes – bugs! eggPlant can be tuned to detect colors - even tones of color; it can operate in dynamic environments using Silverlight, Flex and Flash; it can be tuned to tolerate customized screens and, each time an inconsistency is spotted, a fault report with a screen shot of the actual point of failure is saved for easy reference by developers.
As a test engineer trains eggPlant through a test procedure (or a manual test) a simple command “script” is compiled. This integrated command language in eggPlant is “SenseTalk” and it has proved to be extremely easy-to-use as it was designed for non-development users not necessarily trained in computer languages.
Another unique feature of eggPlant is the two computer approach. eggPlant is loaded on the test controller and using virtual networking communication (VNC) a link is established with the system under test (the SUT). By such method, a single eggPlant license and user can test many systems in any hardware of operating environment across a test lab or across a global network. In computing terms, eggPlant is technology agnostic (cross browser and cross-platform), non-invasive [it doesn't "mess" with systems under test] and can link with any device with an IP address.
All of these features defined in the patent filed in 2003 and granted by the US patent and Trademarks Office in January 2011.
