Eggplant

For Eggplant, testing and testing software should, above all else, increase customer satisfaction and improve the experience of the end user. In their words, testing should result in a product that “delights” its users. Unfortunately, this is not often the case. According to Eggplant’s research, the vast majority of companies which employ testing are regularly meeting their testing objectives, yet only a small fraction considers themselves to be meeting customer expectations. Not only that, but on average, almost a third of IT budgets are spent on testing and QA, yet close to 90 percent of QA teams cannot keep up with their workload.

Eggplant addresses both of these issues with its Digital Automation Intelligence Suite, and particularly with Eggplant AI, a product within that suite which uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics to find defects and maximise coverage of user journeys. Eggplant AI improves efficiency and productivity by providing automation in every area of testing, not just test execution. In addition, to ensure a good end-user experience, everything within Eggplant AI is done from the perspective of an end user. For instance, testing is driven through the user interface (UI), and emphatically not the backend or the application code. Moreover, testing is not restricted to user journeys that appear sensible, taking the more realistic approach that any and every path through the application is a valid one.

Eggplant has a long list of business partners, including resellers such as CGI Group, Pactera, and IT Ecology, that resell the product and have access to the support, services, and technical training needed to help deliver it; service providers, such as NCC Group, Sogeti, Cigniti, and Infosys; and systems integrators, such as IBM, Tata, and Capgemini. Both of the latter groups work with customers to deliver comprehensive test automation solutions.

Between their offices and their partners, Eggplant has well over 400 active customers in upwards of 30 countries, and have served more than 600 customers in total since their inception. These customers come from all manner of sectors, including automotive, aerospace, defence, financial services, healthcare, media, and retail.

Eggplant AI uses model-based testing to automate test case generation. This means that you create a graphical model of the system under test that is then leveraged by the product to automatically generate test cases and related assets. Furthermore, the product uses machine learning and predictive analytics to ensure that all new test cases will either increase test coverage or retest a path that has previously resulted in a defect. In addition, Eggplant AI is able to learn patterns from previous tests that have resulted in errors, and will then repeat these patterns in new test cases until the errors stop occurring. Eggplant AI also comes with comprehensive reporting capabilities, including the run report, which details test execution status; the coverage report, which lists each object in your model along with their test coverage percent and may additionally be displayed graphically as a heat map of your system model; and the test case report, which allows you to search your run report for a specific set of test cases.

Apart from Eggplant AI, there are several other products present in the Digital Automation Intelligence Suite. Eggplant Functional tests from the user perspective through intelligent image and text understanding, API automation, and WebDriver object automation — all within a single test. Eggplant Performance and Eggplant Network together form a performance testing solution capable of testing in a variety of network and performance conditions on demand. Eggplant Automation Cloud allows you to generate and administer a centralised, cloud-based testing lab. Eggplant Manager helps you to manage your test execution process on a large scale, complete with continuous integration.

Eggplant offer FastStart services to shorten implementation times and get teams up and running faster. The company also provides training and certification in a number of Eggplant products, extensive documentation (available in English, Chinese, and Japanese), and a community forum. In addition, all of their partners are given access to the latest tools, training, and other support needed to deliver a full-fledged test automation solution.