Load and stress testing of website and client/server applications accounts for the largest test segment of Platform Lab clients.

The primary reasons these firms seek out Platform Lab to be their load test resource are due to:

Massive bandwidth capability

Platform Lab can provide over 1 Gb Internet connectivity for load and stress testing. Clients may request dedicated bandwidth from 1 Mb to over 1 Gb.

Flexibility

Platform Lab can provide bandwidth for purpose of testing in per Mb per day increments, and client may request varying bandwidth for every day of their test.

Cost effectiveness

As a non-profit, Platform Lab can allocate the hardware and bandwidth for much less than most any internal or external resource.

Partnerships

Platform Lab has partnerships in place with 14 software firms to provide our clients with the best selection of capabilities and price points of load test testing tools. Load Test tools offered from Platform Lab includes: 


AccordSQA/SmarteSuite
AutomatedQA/Test Complete
Borland (Segue)/Silk Performer
Compuware/QA Load
HP Software/Mercury Suite
IBM Rational
Microsoft/Visual Studio Load
NEOtys/NEOload
NRG Global/AppLoader
Open Demand/OpenLoad
PushToTest/TestMaker
Paessler Webstress
Quotium/Qtest
ScapaTech/ScapaTest


Expertise

Platform Lab is affiliated with over 100 IT consulting firms that can evaluate client needs, offer test strategies and conduct testing.

Load testing clients generally engage Platform Lab one of two ways:

1) Drive load from the Lab to the existing (production or beta) website.

This is a very simple and quick set up on behalf of the Lab. The client states how many concurrent users a test will need, the preferred test tool and the length of the test. We create the load test driver environment quickly and setup time is measured in hours, not days.

2) Create the web application or client/server environment at Platform Lab, as well and the infrastructure to drive load against it.

The client will need to specify the exact infrastructure needs to Platform Lab. Often, we will need to work with our vendor partners in order to provide and fulfill client requests.
An advantage of conducting this test at Platform Lab is that the client will often specify a couple different sizes of the target infrastructure in order to build an in-house "right-size". Platform Lab has outstanding relationships with HP, Sun, Cisco, Dell, EqualLogic and several other vendors to arrange for trail evaluations prior to an eventual purchase, pending a successful test.