It's a great platform because it's a SaaS solution, but it also builds on-premises hosting solutions, so we have implemented a hybrid approach. BlazeMeter sets us up for our traditional hosting platforms and application stack as well as the modern cloud-based or SaaS-based application technologies. The solution is completely built on an open-source stack. Before performance testing, we used JMeter. There's flexibility in choosing Gatling, Locust, Taurus, or other open-source technologies. We're able to attract good talent in the market. They like open-source because it's lightweight, accessible, and quick. That's been a strong point. We integrated user access management, so it's easy for consumers to actually use it. It has great reporting features and integrations. It can connect to AppDynamics, Dynatrace, and Splunk. Another great feature is that it meets the various maturity levels in our organization. We still have manual-based testing, and there are some teams that are very engineering and code focused. BlazeMeter helps meet all those maturity levels. For example, a manual tester who wants to get into automation can use the scriptless feature. Even business people can use the record and playback function and record the business process. That is captured into JMeter and Selenium scripts, and they can continue executing that. The solution enables the creation of test data that can be used both for the performance and functional testing of any application. Currently, we aren't using the test data feature in BlazeMeter. It took us a year to realize the benefits because we had to do the design work and the network enablement piece for teams to start using it at that scale. BlazeMeter helps bridge Agile and CoE teams. We define CoE as the center of enablement, not a center of excellence. We don't have central teams. We use the hub and spoke model. The hub is basically the central enablement team. We provide BlazeMeter as a service in the bank, and we manage, maintain, and govern it, but individual teams have federated autonomy. The solution helps us implement shift-left testing. We're still in that stage, and we have various maturity levels in our organization. We have between 6,000 and 7,000 engineers. Out of that, around 2,000 are manual testers. The maturity level across those many thousands of engineers is varied. Some teams have definitely embedded shift left, and BlazeMeter is good at that. They can use YAML files and start shifting left. That means the developers are able to have YAML definitions in their code to do smaller performance load tests. We use the solution's scriptless testing functionality. We have many testers who use scriptless testing now. The record and playback function is also one of the key aspects. The manual testers are definitely getting more confident that they can start moving toward automation. People are finding that the existing test automation helps to build their test cases quicker. They struggled with JMeter as a tool. They had to learn various nuances. With scriptless testing, recording, and playback, they don't have to worry about that. BlazeMeter definitely decreased our test cycle times. During each cycle, we're saving between one to two hours. We enabled integration between BlazeMeter and AppDynamics, so people don't have to log into multiple tools to do their analysis. BlazeMeter provides a single pane of glass to do the analysis. It essentially saves days in the sprint because they would execute a test, then go into AppDynamics, the SCOM, or the IIS logs. To fetch the IIS logs, they would have to wait for the operations team to give them access.
